The son of a German mother and a Hungarian father who fled the country in 1956, Timur Vermes was born in Nuremberg in 1967. He studied history and politics and went on to become a journalist. He has written for the Abendzeitung and the Cologne Express and worked for various magazines. He has ghostwritten several books since 2007. Look Who's Back has sold more than 250,000 copies in its English editions, and rights were sold to 35 territories.
Satirical, sharp, believable . . . Brilliant - RTE An outlandish, take-no-prisoners satire that skewers timid politicians, greedy TV executives, and the general public's thirst for global meaning disguised as entertainment. Its plotting is crisp, fast-moving, and entertaining. - Bookmunch Vermes' ingenuity keeps the pages turning . . . there are powerful insights into the lives and longings of refugees that make this more than mere satire. It's a book that engages deeply. - Financial Times An immensely enjoyable read - Spectator A great book: funny, wicked, tragic - Stern Bolder and funnier than Look Who's Back The prospect that nearly half a million people are going to show up at the German border becomes a real one. Can they be bought off? Sabotaged? Mowed down? Can a fence be built? Electrified? And how will all this play with the folks back home? The novel starts to acquire a deeply involving game-theoretical aspect . . . [W]ith whizz-bang energy and gleeful imaginative savagery. His achievement is to make this exodus, and the shaming hypocrisy of western reactions towards it, seem altogether plausible - Guardian