Die Wüste

Chaim Noll, formerly Hans Noll, was born in 1954 in Berlin as the son of the East German writer Dieter Noll. He lived in East Berlin since 1961. He studied mathematics at the universities of Jena and Berlin, as well as art and art history. In 1980, he refused military service, applied for an exit permit in 1983, and moved with his wife and two children to West Berlin in 1984. He later lived in Stuttgart, where his first books were published, some of whose manuscripts had been smuggled from East Berlin to the West. From 1988 to 1991, he worked as a research associate at the Free University of Berlin (literary sociology), but in 1992 he moved to Rome, where he worked as a freelancer until 1995. In 1995, he relocated with his family to Israel, and since 1997, he has lived in the Negev Desert. Since then, he has been a Writer in Residence and lecturer at the Center for German Studies at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel, until 2019, and has held guest lectureships at various foreign universities. Noll has numerous book and media publications to his name and is a freelance contributor to many German newspapers, magazines, and radio stations.