‘What is a ‘no-brainer’?” the German novelist Jenny Erpenbeck asks translator Michael Hofmann. It is the morning after they have jointly been awarded the International Booker prize, and Hofmann has just used the expression to describe the judges’ decision to award this year’s prize to Erpenbeck’s latest novel Kairos, which Hofmann translated.
But the novel wasn’t such a no-brainer back home, where, despite Erpenbeck being one of Germany’s most celebrated novelists, Kairos didn’t appear on the shortlists of either of the country’s most prestigious literary prizes. Now Erpenbeck has become the first German author to win the International Booker since it was established nearly a decade ago, putting the German publishing world into a bit of a spin. “They are kind of panicking,” she laughs.
