International Courant
German author Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann have received the Worldwide Booker Prize.
Their novel Kairos follows the damaging love affair between a 19-year-old pupil and a married man in his fifties who meet on a bus in East Berlin round 1986.
Their relationship involves epitomize the “crushed idealism” of the German Democratic Republic and the eventual “dissolution of a complete political system.”
They may cut up the £50,000 prize.
The jury selected Kairos from a shortlist of six books and praised the ‘clear prose’ and the wealthy high quality of the interpretation.
“It begins with love and fervour, however it’s simply as a lot about energy, artwork and tradition,” says jury chairwoman Eleanor Wachtel.
“The lovers’ self-absorption, their descent right into a damaging vortex, stays tied to the bigger historical past of East Germany all through this era, usually confronting historical past at unusual angles.”
Final yr’s winner, Time Shelter by Bulgarian creator Georgi Gospodinov and translated by Angela Rodel, was additionally set throughout and after the autumn of the Iron Curtain.
Erpenbeck, 57, was born in Berlin and labored as an opera director earlier than turning into an award-winning novelist. Her works embody The Finish of Days (2014) and Go, Went, Gone (2017), which was longlisted in 2018.
Hofmann, 66, has been known as “maybe probably the most influential translator on this planetexterior from German to English”. Along with poetry and literary criticism, he teaches part-time on the College of Florida.
Worldwide Booker Prize 2024: German victory for Kairos
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