Judith Schalansky was born in Greifswald in former East Germany in 1980 and studied art history and communication design. Her international best-seller, Atlas of Remote Islands, won the Stiftung Buchkunst (the Art Book Award) for "the most beautifully designed book of the year", while her novel The Giraffe's Neck in the English translation by Shaun Whiteside won a special commendation of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for the best translation from German in 2015. Both books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Schalansky works as a freelance writer and book designer in Berlin, where she is also publisher of a prestigious natural history list at Matthes und Seitz.