The Clown Said No

Torben Kuhlmann studied illustration and communications design at the Hamburg University of Applied Science, with book illustration as his main subject. In June 2012 he finished his studies by writing and illustrating the children's book Lindbergh-The Tale of a Flying Mouse. This was his first picture book, and within a very short time it became a best seller. It has now been translated into more than thirty languages. Further mouse adventures followed with Armstrong (2016), Edison (2018), and Einstein (2021), all of which have achieved cult status. Dimitrije Sidjanski (also known as Mischa Damjan) was born in 1914 in Skopje, Macedonia (formerly Yugoslavia). He grew up in Belgrade and studied there before going to Paris to pursue a degree in law. Later he became a lawyer. In 1945 he escaped from captivity in Germany and fled to Switzerland, where he began to write short stories and novels. In 1949 he got to know his future wife, Brigitte Sidjanski, and in 1961 the two of them together founded NordSüd Verlag. In 1979 Dimitrije retired from the company in order to devote himself completely to writing. He died in 1998 at the age of eighty-four. Award-winning translator Anthea Bell (May 1936-October 2018) was the recipient of the Schlegel Tieck Prize for translation from German, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize in 2002 for the translation of W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz, and the 2003 Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation. She lived in Cambridge, England.