Karl-Markus Gauss is an Austrian literary critic, essayist, journalist and prize-winning author. His books, which have been translated into fourteen languages, include Ink Is Bitter: Literary portraits from Barbaropa (1989), The Man Who Wanted to Go into the Freezer (1999), The Europeans About to Become Extinct (2001), and The Widely Spread Germans (2005). His articles have appeared in Die Zeit and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany), Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland), and Die Presse (Austria). Since 1991 he has been editor of the Austrian journal Literature and Criticism (Literatur und Kritik) .

Recent articles

In this fourth Ulysses prize extract, Austrian writer Karl-Markus Gauss travels to Slovakia and explores the slums of the "untouchables of Europe" – the gypsy Roma community.