Berlin. Writer and opera director Jenny Erpenbeck became the first German author to win the International Booker Prize for the English translation of her novel. Kairos.
Erpenbeck was awarded along with the translator Michael Hofmann, with whom she will share 50 thousand pounds (a little over one million pesos) of the prize.
Receiving the award last Tuesday in London, Erpenbeck said she felt very honored and that she didn’t actually have a speech prepared. I’m really surprised
he admitted.
Originally from East Berlin, Erpenbeck is one of the most important representatives of contemporary German literature. Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages. In her country she was awarded numerous times; for example, with the Thomas Mann award, the Hans Fallada and the Cross of the Order of Merit.
Your novel Kairos It is about the love relationship between a young student and a married writer, much older than her, in the last years of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) in east Berlin. However, the relationship between them, fueled by love, music and art, collapses as the country in which they live also comes to an end.
The novel was adapted in April 2023 by the state theater in Cottbus in the federal state of Brandenburg. “What comes back to Kairos So unusual is that it is as beautiful as it is uncomfortable, personal and political. “Erpenbeck invites us to make connections between these political developments that defined generations and a devastating, even brutal love,” the jury noted.
Erpenbeck recently told the rbb-Inforadio radio station in Germany that in the United States and England people are now wondering whether they can get out of capitalism. And in fact there is great interest in understanding why, for example, this supposed alternative, the GDR, failed
, he opined. But Kairos It is not just about East-West tension: it is a story of love and abuse.
Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. After learning bookbinding, he studied theater and musical theater directing. She later worked as a director at the Graz opera house, in Austria, and in Berlin.
She made her debut as a writer in 1999 with the novel Story of the old girl. Other novels, stories and plays followed.
Your novel A house in Brandenburg (2008), about her grandmother’s home, addresses the theme of flight and expulsion based on her own family history. Erpenbeck became known to a wider audience with his novel I go you go he goes (2015), in which it tells the story of young refugees from Africa condemned to do nothing in Berlin.
The Booker International Prize honors works in a foreign language that were translated into English. The publisher Penguin, which published the winning book in Germany, wrote on Instagram that it is still rare for German books, especially literary works, to be translated into English.
Penguin added that the reasons are multiple. Among other things, he mentioned that there is an immense variety of texts in English from all over the world, and the cost of translations also plays an important role.
Furthermore, German is said to be especially difficult to translate.
the publisher said, adding that this makes the award for Jenny Erpenbeck and her translator Michael Hofmann for Kairos be even more wonderful.
In Spain, the book was published by the Anagrama publishing house.