As an expert in German and translation, I was pleased to see Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Kairos win the International Booker Prize 2024, one of the most prominent celebrations of translated literature in the UK. The prize is awarded for a book, and to the people who wrote it: in this case Erpenbeck herself and Michael Hofmann, the distinguished translator who contributed all the words of the English version.
The novel is Erpenbeck’s fourth; Hofmann has created English translations of dozens of books. Kairos tells the story of a love in times of the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, Communist East Germany, and is hailed as a particularly compelling example of what has become Erpenbeck’s hallmark, the intertwining of personal, social and political histories.
