Kairos, written by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated by Michael Hofmann, was the first book translated from German to win the International Booker Prize. It’s an intimate and devastating love story, set in Berlin in the 1980s during a seismic period in European history. The novel intertwines the personal and the political, as two lovers hold on to the past long after they know they should move on.  

Eleanor Wachtel, Chair of the 2024 judges, celebrated the book’s ‘luminous prose’ and its unusual blend of the ‘beautiful and the uncomfortable’, noting how Hofmann’s translation captured ‘the eloquence and eccentricities of Erpenbeck’s writing, the rhythm of its run-on sentences, the expanse of her emotional vocabulary’. 

How did winning feel for the author and translator, and what happened in the days, weeks and months that followed? Can they both rest easy, safe in their success, or is the pressure now really on?  

In this Q&A, Jenny Erpenbeck and Michael Hofmann reflect on what happens next after winning the International Booker Prize and share their advice for this year’s winners. 

Thinking back to the evening of Tuesday 21 May 2024 – could you describe how it felt to win the International Booker? 

Jenny: I was seriously prepared to not win the prize as one should be. So when the winner was announced I simply didn’t recognise the word ‘Kairos’ or grasp what was happening. It was only when I saw the excited faces around me that I understood that it must be us who had won. It felt unreal. 

Michael: Amazing, of course. I think everyone at the table clocked it before I did. I’m still caught in the moment before, people are looking at me, and jumping up and running and shouting, and I’m thinking: What are they doing? What’s this about? At the same time, I think, by rights, yes. To me, the book felt like a proper winner; Jenny’s reviews were extraordinary. I didn’t think I was participating at a travesty, in other words. 

Looking back at your past 12 months as International Booker winners, is there anything you wish you’d known then that you know now?  

Jenny: What a luxury it is to have enough time for writing a book.   

Michael: No, I’ve returned to the ranks, following a glamorous secondment. 

How did people react in Germany to you winning the International Booker? Did it affect the book’s fortunes there?  

Jenny: The book was sold out the first day after the prize announcement. And the sales went on and on for almost the whole year. People would congratulate me on the street. For some media it came as a big surprise. How could it be that someone from the former East won this prestigious prize? The German media are mostly run by Westerners, so there’s generally less interest in specific East German subjects, especially when they suspect us of undermining the common narrative of having been “saved” by the unification.    

Michael: To me, not at all. And I am German, and was in Germany after May and through the summer. With Jenny, it’s of course another story. Perhaps it’s too much to expect that Germans would read it in English… Of course they read the original. The Booker is out there on its own. Something I said in advance of the prize seems to have been borne out: that it’s a prize, in this order, for a book, an author, and a translation. I think an interest in translation and translators has yet to be fully discovered or generated. A way of talking about our work that makes sense, that’s neither lame nor hyperbolic. And not just in the UK either.

Translation rights have been sold in over 33 territories, many of them since you won the International Booker. Why do you think Kairos resonates with readers far beyond Germany? 

Jenny: I think, in first place, it’s the interweaving of a love story and a political story. Both start with big hopes and illusions and end in distrust and manipulation. And that it’s about the fall of the Berlin wall. Everybody thinks they know about the freedoms that were won, but my book also speaks about the losses that came with it. And just now, as we are dealing with serious threats to our democratic systems in many countries, there’s much interest in how to deal with a fundamental collapse of a whole society.  

Michael: Well, I think it is an astounding and brave book, or two books in one. Character and society, micro and macro. Both make huge and intense demands on the reader. Not many books are written with such a developed, even frightening, consciousness of change.  

Does winning feel like the pressure is off – “I’ve made it!” – or that the pressure is now really on, to build on your International Booker success?  

Jenny: In a way. But while I no longer have to prove anything to anyone any more, writing is still about proving to yourself that you’ll find the right words for the story to tell. So it remains a challenge. 

Michael: Ha. Perhaps so. Fail harder. Says Beckett.

What do you think of this year’s shortlist?  

Jenny: The shortlist shows a great variety of different voices, as it should be. I like that kind of a choir. All the writers on the shortlist are well worth reading but, like in the conclave, only one will walk out as the Pope. 

Michael: I’m a translator, by Joseph Brodsky’s definition, I lag behind the original. I’m really enjoying reading Gospodinov (the 2023 winner). My bad. In my own defence, I’ve hardly set foot in the UK or in English bookshops this past year. 

What advice would you give to this year’s winning author and translator?  

Jenny: Think carefully which invitations to accept and how many interviews to give. Plan some breaks for doing nothing but being yourself. Enjoy the inspiring trips and encounters that come with the success.  

Michael: Take it personally and enjoy it while it lasts. There’s (probably) not another one to come. It’s not the new normal, and won’t re-base your life or work. Practically, I would urge you to go to the festivals in India. 

Why do prizes like the International Booker matter?  

Jenny: They remind the reader that a book is something very alive.  

Michael: I actually think prizes are everything. There’s no life without prizes. I like to say. In my lifetime, the graph of creative people has had the mid-range taken out of it, and there are highs and (mostly) lows.