JOSEPH PEARSON was born in Edmonton in 1975. He won a high school scholarship to the United World College of the Adriatic in Duino, Italy, and then studied history at Middlebury College in Vermont. He received his master’s in philosophy and his doctorate in history from the University of Cambridge. Pearson worked in press relations for the United Nations and the European Commission, in central Asia and Brussels, before returning to teaching, first at Columbia University and then at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin, where he lectures in the humanities and creative writing. His essays and short fiction appear regularly in literary journals, and he is the author of Berlin, a portrait of the German capital. Joseph Pearson lives in Berlin.