Beyond the Book: Background information when reading Inkheart

Beyond the Book

This article relates to Inkheart

Cornelia Funke was born 1958 in Dorsten, Westphalia. Although she is one of Germany''s best-selling children's book authors, she was relatively unknown in the United States until The Chicken House, whose books are published by Scholastic in the United States, published The Thief Lord in September 2002. The Chicken House's publisher and managing director, Barry Cunningham, received a letter from a bilingual (English and German) young girl living in England, who wanted to know why her favorite author wasn't published in English. Barry set about the task of tracking down the latest title from Cornelia Funke, Herr Der Diebe. When he published its English translation, The Thief Lord, it immediately entered the New York Times bestseller list where it climbed to the #2 position in November 2002.

Funke lives near Hamburg, Germany with her husband Rolf, her daughter, Anna, and her son, Ben.

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This article relates to Inkheart. It first ran in the June 1, 2005 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.