Esther Vilar

Esther Vilar is an Argentine-German writer. She trained and practised as a medical doctor before establishing herself as an author. Vilar's parents were German-Jewish emigrants. They separated when she was 3 years old. She studied medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, and in 1960 went to West Germany on scholarship to continue her studies in psychology and sociology. She worked as a doctor in a Bavarian hospital for a year, and has also worked as a translator, saleswoman, assembly-line worker in a thermometer factory, shoe model, and secretary.

She still feels her views on gender issues to be underrepresented in popular culture, but has let it go, preferring not to repeat herself, and focusing her non-fiction efforts on the no less controversial topic of religion. The underlying topic in all her writing is freedom versus imprisonment.