Stefanie Zweig was born on September 19, 1932 in Leobsch�tz, now part of Poland. In 1938, her family fled the Nazi persecution of Jews and moved to Kenya, where she attended a British school. They returned to Germany in 1947 when her father, a lawyer, was appointed a judge in Frankfurt. She started working for a Frankfurt newspaper, Abendpost Nachtausgabe, in 1959 and was the arts editor and film reviewer from 1963 until it closed in 1988. She wrote children's books in her spare time and began writing novels only after the newspaper closed. Her novels include Nowhere in Africa and Somewhere in Germany. Nowhere in Africa was adapted into a German film with the same title, which won the… Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2003. Zweig co-wrote the screenplay with the director Caroline Link. Zweig died on April 25, 2014 at the age of 81.