Eleonore Frey is the daughter of the Germanist Emil Staiger. From 1958 to 1966, she studied German studies, Romance studies, and comparative literature at the University of Zurich and the Sorbonne. In 1966, she earned her doctorate with a dissertation on Franz Grillparzer, and in 1972, she completed her habilitation. From 1982 to 1997, she served as a titular professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Zurich. In addition to her scholarly publications in literary studies, she has also published literary texts since the 1980s. The author, who is married to the literary scholar Hans-Jost Frey, currently lives in Zurich and Paris. Eleonore Frey writes narrative prose and essays, and she also translates from English and French. She is a member of the Association of Authors of Switzerland and, since 1999, of the German-Swiss PEN Center. In addition to various scholarships, she received a work award from the Swiss Schiller Foundation in 2002 and the Schiller Prize from the Zurich Cantonal Bank in 2007. Her work "Unterwegs nach Ochotsk" was honored in 2015 with one of the Swiss Literature Prizes from the Federal Office of Culture.