Dr Karina Urbach is a German/British historian and novelist who lives in Cambridge, England.

She has taught here and in Germany. From 2015-20 she researched at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. She is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research at London University.

Karina has worked on numerous BBC, PBS and ZDF documentaries.

Her non-fiction work includes Go-Betweens for Hitler, Queen Victoria and Alice’s Book: How the Nazis stole my grandmother’s cookbook, which has been translated into six languages and turned into an award-winning TV documentary.

Her first novel Cambridge 5: Zeit der Verräter won the 2018 Crime Cologne Award.

Her second espionage novel Das Haus am Gordon Place (Vienna ’48) won the German Crime Award 2024.

It is based on true events: to this day the film The Third Man is considered to be ‘just’ a cinematic masterpiece. Karina’s research shows that it was much more: MI6 used it as a cover operation to work in the Soviet zone of Vienna.

Penguin Random House Germany has commissioned a sequel.

Karina has now translated Vienna ’48 into English.