Born on September 30, 1908 in Ostrowo in what is now Poland, Edzard Schaper was a well-loved author of numerous novels, essays, plays for both theater and radio. HIs education mostly focused on music studies, but after he graduated he became an assistant director and actor in Herford, then assistant director at the State Theater in Stuttgart. During the 1920s, he published his first book, a novel named The Last Guest--soon to be followed by more writing. His greatest success would be the 1934 novel, The Island Tutarsaar. Schaper lived in Estonia from 1930-40 and worked as a correspondent for United Press. Because he declined to relocate to Germany in 1940, the Nazis deprived him of his citizenship and sentenced him to death in absentia. Schaper arrived in Switzerland in 1947 via Sweden, where he worked as a forest worker and secretary. Schaper would go on to write for over three decades. Schaper died on January 29, 1984, in Bern.