Ralph Freedman, who grew up in Nazi Germany, emigrated at 19 to England and ultimately the United States. He served in the US Army during World War II, in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy, afterwards graduating from the University of Washington and earning a doctorate at Yale. He taught 12 years at the University of Iowa, 22 at Princeton and for two post-retirement years at Emory University. He wrote and published two novels (
Divided, 1948 and
Rue the Day, 2009), criticism (
The Lyrical Novel, 1963), biographies of Hesse (1978), Rilke (1996), and many essays. His works have been translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese. A Chinese version of the biography of Rilke is in press.