Anka Muhlstein was born in Paris in 1935. Muhlstein has published biographies of Queen Victoria, James de Rothschild, Cavelier de La Salle, and Astolphe de Custine; studies on Catherine de Medicis, Marie de Medicis, and Anne of Austria; a double biography, Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart; and most recently, Balzac's Omelette and Monsieur Proust's Library (Other Press). She has won two prizes from the Academie francaise and the Goncourt Prize for Biography. She and her husband, Louis Begley, have written a book on Venice, Venice for Lovers. They live in New York City. Adriana Hunter studied French and Drama at the University of London. She has translated more than fifty books including Couple Mechanics, The Travels of Daniel Ascher, Balzac's Omelette, and Electrico W (winner of the French-American Foundation's 2013 Translation Prize in Fiction). She won the 2011 Scott Moncrieff Prize, and her work has been shortlisted twice for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She lives in Norfolk, England.