Raoul Schrott became an overnight sensation on the German literary scene following the 1997 publication of Die Erfindung der Poesie: Gedichte aus den ersten vier tausend Jahren (The Invention of Poesy: Poems from the First Four Thousand Years), adaptations of poems from languages as diverse as Sumerian, Welsh, Breton and Assyrian. His own prize-winning work includes the collections Hotels (1995) and Tropen (Tropes/Tropics) (1998), and a version of Euripides' Bacchae produces at the Vienna Burgtheater in 1999.

Raoul Schrott and Evelyn Schlag

6 March 2001