By BAMUTURAKI MUSINGUZI

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'Kairos', written by the German author Jenny Erpenbeck has been named the winner of the International Booker Prize 2024.

The novel is the story of a destructive affair between a young woman and an older man in 1980s East Berlin. It intertwines the personal and the political as the two lovers embody East Germany’s crushed idealism, with both holding on to the past long after they know they should move on.

The winner was announced by Eleanor Wachtel, chair of the 2024 judges, at a ceremony sponsored by Maison Valentino on May 21, 2024. It was held at London’s Tate Modern and hosted by academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari.

The £50,000 ($63,573) prize is split equally between author Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann, giving each equal recognition.

Read: Six works make it to the Booker Prize 2024 shortlist

A meditation on hope and disappointment, Kairos poses complex questions about freedom, loyalty, love and power.

In East Berlin in 1986, a man and a woman meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, and they embark on an affair fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain.

But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a crack forms, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power.

And the world around them is changing too: As the German Democratic Republic (GDR) begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and loyalties, ushering in a new era, whose great gains also involve profound loss.

“In luminous prose, Jenny Erpenbeck exposes the complexity of a relationship between a young student and a much older writer, tracking the daily tensions and reversals that mark their intimacy, staying close to the apartments, cafés, and city streets, workplaces and foods of East Berlin. It starts with love and passion, but it’s at least as much about power, art and culture. The self-absorption of the lovers, their descent into a destructive vortex, remains connected to the larger history of East Germany during this period, often meeting history at odd angles,” Wachtel said while announcing the winner.

“Michael Hofmann’s translation captures the eloquence and eccentricities of Erpenbeck’s writing, the rhythm of its run-on sentences, the expanse of her emotional vocabulary. What makes Kairos so unusual is that it is both beautiful and uncomfortable, personal and political. Erpenbeck invites you to make the connection between these generation-defining political developments and a devastating, even brutal love affair, questioning the nature of destiny and agency. Like the GDR, it starts with optimism and trust, then unravels,” Wachtel added.

“The fall of the Wall is an idea of breaking free. And what interested me is that breaking free is not the only thing that can be told in such a story."

There are years before and years after. It’s also about what follows the happy end,” Erpenbeck said.

“It’s a wonderfully circumstantial story in which the ten years pre- and post-Mauerfall come into play. The book seems to me like a coin, which has a personal story – heads, as it were – on one side, and tails, the emblem of the state, on the other. It keeps being spun into the air, and it comes down heads, it comes down tails,” Hofmann said.

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“It’s a private story of a big love and its decay, but it’s also a story of the dissolution of a whole political system. Simply put: How can something that seems right in the beginning, turn into something wrong? This transition interested me. It has a lot to do with language – since language is made to express feelings and visions as much as to hide or betray them,” Erpenbeck said.

“It can reveal something interior, and yet mislead people, or it can just be a blank surface. If you look at the details of what is spoken and where there’s silence instead, you’ll also be able to follow the invisible currents, the shifting power between generations, the techniques of manipulation and abuse,” Erpenbeck added.

“The age difference is not the point. The point is the character. Even if Katharina could have met a version of Hans when he was 20 years younger, he would have been the same character. The character is what matters—if someone is manipulating, or hiding a big part of his life,” Hofmann said.

“An older man looks at a young woman with a certain kind of pleasure? This is normal. You admire beauty. You are happy to look at some young person, man or woman, it doesn’t matter. It’s not a crime. Only if you use your experience to manipulate someone, like Hans does with Katharina,” Hofmann added.

Kairos, published by Granta Books in 2023 follows last year’s International Booker Prize winner, Time Shelter, in being set during and after the fall of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe.

Erpenbeck, who was longlisted for the prize in 2018, becomes the first German writer to win it. Hofmann becomes the first male translator to win.

Granta Books wins for the second time since 2016, when the prize took its current form.

Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967, and is an opera director, playwright and award-winning novelist. In the United States, Kairos was longlisted for 2023’s National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Hofmann is a poet, reviewer and translator. He has translated several German authors, including Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth and Hans Fallada. He is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 1995 for the translation of his father’s novel, The Film Explainer.

Read: Booker Prize goes to Gospodinov

Kairos was chosen from a shortlist of six books including Not a River, The Details, Mater 2–10, What I’d Rather Not Think About, and Crooked Plow. They were selected from 149 books published in the UK or Ireland between May 1, 2023, and April 30, 2024, and submitted by publishers.

Alongside Wachtel, the 2024 judging panel includes: award-winning poet Natalie Diaz; Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist Romesh Gunesekera; ground-breaking visual artist William Kentridge; and acclaimed writer, editor and translator Aaron Robertson.