Berlin – Jenny Erpenbeck was not ready for the precise speech. “I’m actually shocked,” he stated when he took the stage in London on Tuesday night with nice pleasure and humility. The 57-year-old turned the primary German to win the International Book Award – one of the crucial prestigious literary awards in Great Britain. The creator, from East Berlin, acquired this 12 months’s prize for the English translation of his novel “Kairos” along with the translator Michael Hofmann, with whom he shared the prize cash of fifty,000 kilos (equal to 58,500 euros).
Erpenbeck is taken into account one of the crucial vital representatives of German literature of the time; The US journal “The New Yorker” even thought in 2017 that Erpenbeck would someday win the Nobel Prize. The weekly journal “Die Zeit” describes the Berlin-based author as “the literary voice of Germany on the planet.” His works seem in additional than 30 languages. Erpenbeck additionally acquired a number of awards on this nation, such because the Thomas Mann Prize, the Hans Fallada Prize and the Cross of Merit on the Ribbon.
The creator stated he felt very honored on the award ceremony in London. He remembered that he comes from a household of writers. His mother and father are the thinker and author John Erpenbeck and the well-known Arabist and translator Doris Kilias.
Judge: Award-winning novel “Kairos” is “stunning and unsettling”
His novel “Kairos” focuses on the love between a younger pupil and an older married author in East Berlin over the past years of the GDR. However, the connection between the 2, fueled by their shared love of music and artwork, fades away, because the surroundings round them crumbles. In April 2023, the Cottbus State Theater introduced prose to the stage. “Kairos” is exceptional as a result of it’s “stunning and ugly, private and political,” the decide stated in a press release. Erpenbeck invitations us to make a connection between a political growth that outlined generations and a harmful, even merciless, love.
Erpenbeck lately stated on rbb Inforadio that in the mean time there’s something seen in America and England about whether or not we are able to get out of capitalism. “And there’s truly quite a lot of curiosity in understanding why, for instance, this so-called various of the GDR failed.” “Kairos” is just not solely about East-West, it’s a love story, it’s about torture.
“Sometimes I had the sensation that – as quickly because the phrase East-West got here up – German college students had been extra more likely to shut down or their curiosity was completely different, at the least within the western a part of Germany. “It is tough in a rustic the place each elements are concerned in the issue however have by no means had the identical expertise,” emphasised the creator. It is completely different once you take a look at these occasions from the surface since you are free to be taught one thing from them.
Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. After coaching as a librarian, he studied theater and directing. Directing work on the opera home in Graz and Berlin was adopted by Erpenbeck’s writing debut in 1999 with the novel “The Story of the Old Child”. Other novels, tales and performs adopted.
His novel “Visitation” (2008) about his grandmother’s home in Brandenburg is about flight and displacement primarily based on his household historical past. Erpenbeck is understood to a large viewers for his 2015 novel “Gehen, walked, gone”. In it he tells the story of younger refugees from Africa who had been sentenced to do nothing in Berlin.
Publisher: German works are not often translated into English
The International Booker Prize honors overseas language works translated into English. It remains to be uncommon for German books, particularly books, to be translated into English, Penguin Verlag wrote on Instagram. The causes are varied, for instance, there’s a massive collection of English language texts obtainable from everywhere in the world, and translation prices additionally play a giant function. “German is claimed to be very tough to translate.” This award could be very huge for Jenny Erpenbeck and her translator Michael Hofmann for the phrase “Kairos”.