Meet the author

Wolf Erlbruch.

Writer & illustrator · Germany · b. 1948

Wolf Erlbruch: the late German master of the philosophical picture book — from the gleefully rude Little Mole to the profound Duck, Death and the Tulip, a Hans Christian Andersen and Astrid Lindgren award winner.

Wolf Erlbruch (1948-2022) was a German illustrator and author widely regarded as one of the masters of the picture book, and a professor of illustration for many years. His work ranged from the gleefully rude to the profoundly philosophical. He illustrated the endlessly rereadable The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business, a toilet-humour classic that quietly teaches a zoo's worth of droppings, and both wrote and illustrated Duck, Death and the Tulip, a spare, astonishingly calm fable in which a duck befriends Death himself. His illustrations for Oren Lavie's The Bear Who Wasn't There show the same tender, surreal wit. Unafraid of mortality and the meaning of life, Erlbruch made books that speak to children and adults alike, and his gently surrealist style has been widely imitated across Europe and beyond.