Translator, writer, and editor Tim Mohr died at his home in Brooklyn on March 31. The cause, according to friend and literary collaborator Paul Stanley, was pancreatic cancer.

Mohr was a prolific translator of literature from the German, bringing such novels as Dorthea Dieckmann’s Guantanamo (Soft Skull), Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands and Wrecked (Grove Atlantic), and Alex Beer’s The Second Rider (Europa) into English, as well as Wolfgang Herrndorf’s YA novel Why We Took the Car (Scholastic). He also translated seven novels by Alina Bronsky for Europa Editions, including Broken Glass Park, Just Call Me Superhero, and The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine—the latter of which was named one of PW’s best books of 2011.

“When Tim began working as a literary translator it seemed to him (and to many of us) that the world of literature in translation had a laddish patina to it, that it was dominated by white guys translating well-established white guys. Tim took issue with that and was determined to establish his reputation as a translator of female voices, and, at the same time, of voices from outside the mainstream,” wrote Michael Reynolds, executive director of Europa Editions, in a statement on Mohr’s death. “Tim’s commitment to undiscovered female voices and to edgier, less mainstream authors surprised nobody who knew him.”

In addition to his translation work, Mohr was a longtime chronicler of the Berlin music scene and the author of Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall, published in 2018 by Algonquin Books and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. PW called the book, which was a PW Pick, an “up-close-and-personal tour of the punk rock scene of 1980s East Germany” that proves “engaging, enlightening, and well worth checking out.” He also collaborated on memoirs by musicians such as Gil Scott-Heron, Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses, Genesis P-Orridge, and Paul Stanley of KISS.

“As Europa’s publisher,” Reynolds added, “I can only say that we were lucky to have worked with Tim, that we’re grateful for his brilliant translations, which left our reading landscape so much the richer, and that he will be terribly missed.”