Harman is a native of Dublin, Ireland. His publications include a new translation of Franz Kafka’s novel "The Castle," which was nominated for the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club prize, selected as a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times, and won the Modern Language Association’s first Lois Roth Award.

Harman also edited and co-translated the work of Swiss modernist Robert Walser in "Robert Walser Rediscovered: Stories, Fairy-Tale Plays, and Critical Responses." He has also written extensively on German and Irish literature as well as on literary translation for journals such as the Sewanee Review, Partisan Review, German Quarterly, New Literary History and New England Review as well as newspapers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Irish Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. Among his other translations are works by Günter Grass and Hermann Hesse and by various contemporary German-language writers. He is currently completing a new translation of Franz Kafka’s novel "Amerika," which is set the United States and will appear as "Missing Person," more accurately reflecting Kafka’s original German title.

Harman has received numerous awards. In 2000-01, he was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He has also recently received grants and residencies from the Office of the Federal Chancellor of Austria; the Carl Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, California; the European Translators’ Collegium in Straelen, Germany; and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, Ireland.