Daniel Glattauer

Daniel Glattauer (born 19 May 1960) is an Austrian writer and former journalist. He was born in Vienna, where he still lives and works. A former regular columnist for Der Standard, a national daily newspaper, he is best known for his dialogic epistolary novel Gut gegen Nordwind and its sequel Every Seventh Wave (Alle sieben Wellen).

His literary works were translated into 40 languages, sold over 3 million times and adapted for radio, theater, television and cinema alike, even beyond the German speaking countries. In 2006 he was nominated for the German Book Prize (Deutscher Buchpreis) for his novel Gut gegen Nordwind. This was later translated into English by Jamie Bulloch and Katharina Bielenberg, and published by MacLehose Press in 2011 as Love Virtually.

Glattauer's novels and plays are inspired by his personal experiences, dealing with situations and themes constructed from memories of his time as a journalist and his psychosocial counsellor training.

With him often being described as a "feel-good-author", Glattauer's work is characterized by humor and romantic relationships, catering to the masses and leading some critics to find fault with a lack of depth to his novels.

Glattauer was born in Vienna on 19 May 1960 and was raised in Favoriten, the city's 10th district, where he also went to school at Neulandschule Laaerberg. In high school, at the age of 16, he started writing his first love poems and short stories that remain unpublished. For private use only he also wrote songs for the guitar.

After graduating in 1978, he went on to study pedagogy and art history at the University of Vienna in 1979, where he also did his doctorate in 1985, writing his dissertation about "the evil in the upbringing". The same year, at the age of 25, he met Lisi, whom he married 20 years later. She brought her 5-year-old son, Thomas, into the relationship and they raised him together.

Glattauer is not the only journalist and author in his family. Herbert O. Glattauer, his father, is a retired journalist and freelance writer, having published multiple books. He also wrote around 40 short stories under the pseudonym 'Oscar Hannibal Pippering', starring a private detective of the same name. Daniel Glattauer's elder brother, Nikolaus (1959–2025), was a journalist, author and teacher in Vienna, having published books with a humorous take on education. Since the birth of Theo, Glattauer's nephew, Daniel documented his upbringing and maturing in short texts and interviews and further made him the topic of two books, "Theo und der Rest der Welt" (1997) and "Theo. Antworten aus dem Kinderzimmer" (2010).

From 2010 to 2012 he did a five-semester-long diploma course at "ARGE Bildungsmanagement" to be a psychosocial counsellor.