Born in Munich from a Jewish-Polish family, she moved to Italy in early 80s. Here she started a career in publishing working with Mondadori house in Milan. In 1989 she published her first German poetry collection. In 1997 she made her literary debut publishing a narrative nonfiction book called Lezioni di tenebra (Mondadori), in which she tracked her mother’s story from Poland to Germany through the Nazi atrocities of WWII. In 2002 she published Cibo (Mondadori), and in 2010 the novel Le rondini di Montecassino (Guanda) came out, followed by the essay Bloody Cow (Il Saggiatore, 2012) and then The Girl with the Leica (Europa), that in 2018 earned her the premio Bagutta, premio Selezione Campiello and premio Strega.