Gregor von Rezzori was born in 1914 in Chernivtsi, then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bukovina. In the 1930s, he studied architecture, medicine and art in Vienna. After the Second World War he lived in Germany and then in Italy. He was engaged in journalism, acting and writing film scripts, for example in the films of Louis Malle and Volker Schlöndorff.

The story collection Maghrebinische Geschichten (1953) brought him his first international success. Four and a half decades of fruitful writing career followed, which includes collections of essays and stories, travelogues, reports and novels, among which the most important are Ein Hermelin in Tschernopol (1958; Hermelin in Chernopol, Zagreb, 1961), Der Tod meines Bruders Abel (1976) and Memoiren eines Antisemiten (1979). In them, Rezzori masterfully combines a narrative autopsy of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with a precise diagnosis of the cultural and political turmoil that engulfed that part of Europe in the interwar period. His works have been translated into numerous languages.

Rezzori died in 1998 at his estate near Florence.