Heinrich Steinfest (born 10 April 1961 in Albury,

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

) is a multiple award-winning Austrian writer of

crime novel Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, ...

s. Two years after his birth, his emigrant parents moved back to their native Vienna, where he lived until the late 1990s. He then moved to

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

, where he lives today. His novels contain bizarre examples of events that seemingly confound analysis. His most formidable character is Cheng, a Viennese detective with no clear ties to

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, born in Vienna to Chinese parents driven there by their enthusiasm for the Viennese waltz. Awards he has won include the

Deutscher Krimi Preis The Deutscher Krimi Preis, or the ''German Crime Fiction Award'', is the oldest and most prestigious German literary prize for crime fiction. It has been awarded since 1985 by the Bochum Crime Archive. Unlike the Friedrich Glauser Prize, which is a ...

in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2009. His novel ''Der Allesforscher'' was shortlisted for the

German Book Prize The German Book Prize (''Deutscher Buchpreis'') is awarded annually, in October, by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (''Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels'') to the best new German language novel of the year. The books, publ ...

in 2014. Steinfest dedicated this novel to his brother who, like the sister of the novel's protagonist, was killed in a mountaineering accident.

References

Living people 21st-century Austrian novelists 1961 births {{Austria-writer-stub