Jenny Erpenbeck and her translator Michael Hofmann won the coveted International Booker prize for Kairos a fiction which was translated into English. Erpenbeck previously won the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, for The End of Days (2015). Kairos ( name of a Greek gid as well as a word for a critical moment, is Erpenbeck’s fourth novel and the first of her books to be translated by Hofmann, is an allegorical story of a May-December affair unfolding in East Berlin during the end days of the GDR. An extramarital entanglement between the 19-year-old student Katharina and Hans, a writer in his fifties, starts sweetly vet descends into coercion as his jealousy takes a sadistic turn. Erpenbeck invites you to make the connection between these generation-defining political developments, and this devastating, brutal love affair, questioning  the nature of destiny and agency. The story starts with optimism and trust and then badly unravels.

Erpenbeck’s novel Go, Went, Gone, translated by Susan Bernofsky was long listed for the International Booker Prize 2018 incidents Hoffman, a poet and has translated more than 80 books from German, educated in UK, East German parent, was on the judging panel that year. 

Erpenbeck’s mother Doris Kilias was a translator from the Arabic, her paternal grandparents were writers and involved in film, and her father is a philosopher. 

Kairos, resonate more widely, echoing last year’s winner, Time Shelter, Written by Georgi Gospodinov and translated by Angela Rode, which was also after the fall of the Iron Curtain, examining life after communism.

Erpenbeck also directs operas and plays. “ It has at least six layers, she says, he thinks, she thinks, he remembers what she said. You have so many voices in the book, even if the main characters are only two. Mixes tenses to control the rhythm and communicate these layers of time. The German historic present, rendered in English in the present tense, enables the reader to get in the middle of things, but also to take up speed. It’s like accelerating, and not in control”, Erpenbeck explains.

According to Hoffman it is Like a love affair or a collapsing political system.

According to Erpenbeck “Human beings also have to become active and grab this chance and their moment and make the best of it”. Critical moment when an opportunity is opened or offered by the gods”. The title refers to the Mauerfall – the fall of the Wall – and the couple’s chance encounter on a bus, the reward is also a lucky moment.