Erpenbeck, Hofmann win 2024 International Booker for ‘Kairos’

The novel Kairos, written by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated from German by Michael Hofmann (Granta), has won the £50,000 (A$95,325) International Booker Prize, reports the Bookseller.

Kairos was chosen from a shortlist of six by a judging panel that included writer and broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel (chair), poet Natalie Diaz, Booker Prize–shortlisted novelist Romesh Gunesekera, artist William Kentridge, and writer, editor and translator Aaron Robertson.

Said Wachtel: ‘In luminous prose, Jenny Erpenbeck exposes the complexity of a relationship between a young student and a much older writer, tracking the daily tensions and reversals that mark their intimacy, staying close to the apartments, cafés, and city streets, workplaces and foods of East Berlin. It starts with love and passion, but it’s at least as much about power, art and culture. The self-absorption of the lovers, their descent into a destructive vortex, remains connected to the larger history of East Germany during this period, often meeting history at odd angles.’

Wachtel said Hofmann’s translation had captured ‘the eloquence and eccentricities of Erpenbeck’s writing, the rhythm of its run-on sentences, the expanse of her emotional vocabulary’.

‘What makes Kairos so unusual is that it is both beautiful and uncomfortable, personal and political,’ said Wachtel. ‘Erpenbeck invites you to make the connection between these generation-defining political developments and a devastating, even brutal love affair, questioning the nature of destiny and agency. Like the GDR, it starts with optimism and trust, then unravels.’

The International Booker Prize is awarded to a book translated into English, with the prize money shared equally between the winning writer and translator.

The winner of the 2023 prize was Time Shelter (Georgi Gospodinov, trans by Angela Rodel, Weidenfeld & Nicolson).

Category: International news