Edith Bruck was born in Hun­gary in 1931, and as a young teen she was deport­ed with her fam­i­ly to the con­cen­tra­tion camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, Chris­tianstadt, Lands­berg, and Bergen-Belsen, where she lost both her par­ents and a broth­er. After the end of WWII, she briefly returned to Hun­gary, lived in Czecho­slo­va­kia, and then moved to Israel, where she stayed for three years. Work­ing for a danc­ing troupe in 1954 she trav­eled to Italy where she decid­ed to set­tle and where she still lives today.

Bruck is the author of more than twen­ty books, both prose and poet­ry, devot­ed to her life-long com­mit­ment to Holo­caust tes­ti­mo­ny, start­ing with Who Loves You Like This (1959 in Ital­ian and 2000 in Eng­lish, pub­lished by Paul Dry Books). She has won sev­er­al Ital­ian lit­er­ary awards; most recent­ly, in 2021, Lost Bread was a final­ist for the pres­ti­gious Pre­mio Stre­ga and win­ner of Pre­mio Stre­ga gio­vani (youth).

Bruck has gained nation­al and inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion for her writ­ings in Holo­caust tes­ti­mo­ny and, more gen­er­al­ly, in con­tem­po­rary Ital­ian lit­er­a­ture. Among oth­er hon­ors, in 2021 she received the Cav­a­lieri­ato di Gran Croce, con­ferred by the Pres­i­dent of Italy. Along with Pri­mo Levi, Edith Bruck is one of the most pro­lif­ic writ­ers of Holo­caust nar­ra­tives in Ital­ian. Her books have been trans­lat­ed into many lan­guages includ­ing Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Dutch, Pol­ish, Hun­gar­i­an, and Hebrew.