Bodo Kirchhoff

Bodo Kirchhoff (born 6 July 1948) is a German writer and novelist. He was born in Hamburg before moving with his family to Kirchzarten in the Black Forest in 1955, which he describes as a culture shock. In addition to writing literary fiction, he has worked on various projects for German television, such as long-runner Tatort, and has written movie screenplays. One of his best-known novels is "Infanta" (1990), which has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In 2016, his novel, which features an African migrant in Italy, "Encounter" won the German Book Prize.
Life.
Bodo Kirchhoff received his high school diploma in 1968. After this he spent two years in the military, followed by a year selling ice cream in the United States of America. From 1972 to 1979 he studied pedagogy and psychology at Frankfurt University and completed his doctoral thesis on Jacques Lacan. During this period he was noticed by Suhrkamp, with whom he published until he switched to Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, and published a both a novel and a play in 1979, beginning his career as a prolific author and multiple prize winner.
In the 1980s, he traveled extensively and wrote for the magazine "TransAtlantik". Though he wrote nonfiction for this magazine, many of his experiences inspired his fictional works.
In 1993 he evaluated the German Army's participation in UNOSOM. After this he was the 1994–95 Lecturer at the prestigious Frankfurt lectures. His topic was "legends about your own body".
In 2010 Kirchhoff revealed in an article in Der Spiegel that as a twelve-year-old schoolboy, he had been sexually abused by the choirmaster at his boarding school, which he began attending in 1959, after the divorce of his parents, by Lake Constance. He has said that his work, as a consequence, often has as its theme "the reconciliation between sexuality and language"
In 1987 he married editor and lecturer Ulrike Bauer. Together they have two children, Claudius, born 1988, and Sophia, born 1993. Since 2003, they have offered week-long writing courses at the cost of €1900 at their home in Italy.