German writer Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann win the International Booker Prize.
Their novel Kairos tells the devastating love story between a 19-year-old student and a married man in his 50s who meet on a bus in East Berlin around 1986.
Their relationship embodied the “shattered idealism” of the German Democratic Republic and the eventual “disintegration of the entire political system.”
They will split the £50,000 prize.
Judges selected Kairos from a shortlist of six books, praising its “bright prose” and rich translation quality.
“It begins with love and passion, but it is at least as much about power, art and culture,” said jury president Eleanor Wachtel.
“The lovers’ self-absorption, the destructive spiral into which they fell, remains connected to the larger history of East Germany during this period, encountering history often at strange angles.”
Last year’s winner, Time Shelter, written by Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov and translated by Angela Rodel, is also set during and after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Erpenbeck, 57, was born in Berlin and worked as an opera director before becoming an award-winning novelist. Her works include The End (2014) and the 2018 longlisted Gone, Gone, Gone (2017).
Hoffmann, 66, has been called “arguably the most influential translator in the world.”, External In addition to poetry and literary criticism, he teaches part-time at the University of Florida.
