My experience of migration was prolonged: from my birthplace Rimavská Sobota, the journey led to Budapest, then to Ljubljana and onwards to the divided city of Trieste and in January 1951 to Zurich. I was five years old. My baggage contained three languages: Hungarian, Slovenian and Italian. At school, I soon learned the fourth language,…
Ilma Rakusa
Ilma Rakusa is a Swiss writer and translator. She was born in Rimavská Sobota, Slovakia, to a Hungarian mother and a Slovenian father, and spent her childhood in Budapest, Ljubljana and Trieste. From 1965–1971 she studied Slavic Languages and Literature, and Romance Languages and Literature in Zürich, Paris and St. Petersburg, and in 1971 she was awarded a doctorate for her dissertation on the 'Theme of Loneliness in Russian Literature'. Since 1977 she has been a lecturer at the University of Zürich, and also a freelance writer, translator and journalist (for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Die Zeit etc). She lives in Zürich.