With “Kairos” Jenny Erpenbeck is on the shortlist for the renowned International Booker Prize. Another success for the award-winning author.
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Jenny Erpenbeck, born in East Berlin in 1967, entered the literary stage in 1999 with her novella “The Story of the Old Child”. Many publications followed, including novels, short stories and plays. Both readers and critics praised her work, and she received numerous awards. These include the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon, the Hans Fallada Prize, the Uwe Johnson Prize and the Thomas Mann Prize. Now her novel “Kairos,” published in 2021, is on the shortlist for the International Booker Prize.
“Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck: Chances of winning the Booker Prize
Erpenbeck has also established herself internationally as an outstanding author of contemporary literature. She received, among others, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, now known as the Man Booker International Prize, and the Italian Premio Strega Europeo. The Guardian lists her novel “Visitation” as one of the “100 Best Books of the 21st Century.”
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The American translation of her latest novel “Kairos” made it onto the longlist of the National Book Awards in the USA in 2023. Her works, translated into more than 30 languages, reach a global audience, something that went somewhat under the radar in this country. “Kairos” is on the shortlist for the International Booker Prize.
Nineteen-year-old Katharina and Hans, a married man in his mid-fifties, met by chance in East Berlin in the late 1980s and couldn't get away from each other for the next few years. Against the backdrop of the declining GDR and the upheaval after 1989, Jenny Erpenbeck tells in her distinctive language about the depths of happiness - about the journey of two lovers on the border between truth and lies, about obsession and violence, hate and hope. Everything in her life turns into something lost the very second it happens. The limit is always just a moment.
Blurb/Penguin
The story of “Kairos” tells the unusual love story between Katharina, a 19-year-old woman, and Hans, a 53-year-old man. Hans, who was born in 1933, describes himself as a small, enthusiastic Nazi in his childhood. Katharina, who was born in the same year as the author Erpenbeck, 1967, meets Hans in the last years of the GDR.
Novels by Jenny Erpenbeck in the correct order
Tale of the Old Child, 1999
Tand, 2001
Dictionary., 2004
Visitation, 2008
Things that disappear, 2009.
Everyday Evening, 2012
Getting lost very far - Getting lost from getting lost., 2014
Go, went, gone, 2015
Not a novel, 2018
Cairos, 2021
Christine Lavant, 2023
In 2023, Irish writer Paul Lynch won the Booker Prize for his novel “Prophet Song.”