Maarten Asscher studied law and Assyriology at Leyden University in the Netherlands. He started his career in literary publishing in 1980 and became the Dutch publisher of writers such as Carlos Fuentes, Primo Levi, Amos Oz, and Wislawa Szymborska. In 2004, after six years as a cultural policy advisor at the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, he became an independent bookseller. He is presently director and co-owner of the Athenaeum Bookshop in Amsterdam. He has written and published poetry, short stories and novellas, a novel and several books of essays, among them an aquatic history of the Netherlands. Most of his books have also appeared in German translation. Asscher has translated poetry by such diverse poets as Paul Valéry, Albrecht Haushofer and Fernando Pessoa. Maarten Asscher lives in Amsterdam with his wife and daughter. He has two adult daughters from a previous marriage.

Brian Doyle-Du Breuil studied Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible in Dublin and the University of Leuven (Belgium) where he presently teaches courses in biblical Hebrew. In addition to his university work, he has translated a variety of genres from Dutch into English over a period of more than twenty years, including several academic monographs, novels, literary nonfiction, and poetry.