Erich Linder was born in 1924 in Lemberg, Galicia, the son of a Romanian Jew, Michael, and of an Ashkenazi Pole, Reizel Nacht.

Erich spent his childhood in Vienna but in 1934 his father opened a small tailor's business in Milan. A few years afterwards, racial laws forced the business to cease trading and in 1940 Erich was deported to Ferramonti concentration camp, in Calabria (where he remained until 1943).

Erich started to work very young. While he was still attending the Jewish school on Via Eupili, in the evenings he would translate German literature classics, which he published through the publisher Alberto Corticelli under the pseudonym Aldo R. Gerrini. Always looking for translations, at the start of the 1940s, he approached Augusto and Luciano Foà's Agenzia Letteraria Internazionale.

It was Luciano who involved him in Adriano Olivetti's publishing firm and invited him to Ivrea in 1943 to become editor of Nuove Edizioni Ivrea. When the events of 8 September 1943 brought a sudden end to the business, Linder tried to escape to Switzerland but was sent back at the border. In the summer of 1944 he was working in Rome as an interpreter for the allied forces. It was there that he came into contact with the Rome branch of the publishing house Bompiani for which he was responsible for acquiring literary rights in Great Britain by establishing connections with various agents.

Strengthened by this experience, when he returned to Milan after the end of the war, he was recruited by Bompiani to manage its internal literary agency. This he did until 1946 when he started to work for Ali although, for a while, he combined agency work with other activities, namely various translations and collaborations with Libreria Internazionale and with the scientific publisher Krachmalnicoff.

In 1948 Augusto Foà died and when Luciano accepted the offer to work for Einaudi, he entrusted Linder with managing the agency.

In the following years, he married Mariella Villaroel and produced a son Dennis in 1955. His work to constantly develop the agency would make Linder the most renowned literary agent in Europe.

With an outstanding knowledge of the publishing process and of all the mechanisms of the publishing market, gifted with great flair as well as being highly educated, conscientious and refreshingly honest, Linder was a master in finding the right publisher for each title and always tried in his work to reconcile the interests of author, publisher and reader alike.

He died suddenly in Milan in the spring of 1983.