German author Jenny Erpenbeck, along with translator Michael Hofmann, has won the 2024 International Booker Prize for her novel “Kairos.” The book, chosen from 149 submissions, details a young woman’s turbulent and destructive affair with an older man in East Berlin during the 1980s, against the backdrop of the final years of communist East Germany. The £50,000 prize will be shared between Erpenbeck and Hofmann, who was praised for maintaining the eloquence and eccentricities of the original text.
The award panel, chaired by Canadian broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel, lauded “Kairos” as a richly textured evocation of a tormented love affair intertwined with personal and national transformations. Wachtel highlighted how the novel’s depiction of the lovers’ descent into a destructive vortex is intricately connected to the larger history of East Germany, often intersecting with historical events at odd angles.
Erpenbeck, born and raised in East Berlin, expressed her hope that the book would reveal aspects of East Germany beyond the usual narratives of state surveillance and repression by the Stasi. She emphasized that her story captures the complex experiences of life in East Germany before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, illustrating that breaking free is just one part of the larger historical context.
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