What the struggle to find the 2024 International Booker winner in libraries means for publishing

As an expert in German and translation, I was pleased to see Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Kairos win the International Booker Prize 2024, one of the most prominent celebrations of translated literature in the UK. The prize is awarded for a book, and to the people who wrote it: in this case Erpenbeck herself and Michael Hofmann, the distinguished translator who contributed all the words of the English version.

The novel is Erpenbeck’s fourth; Hofmann has created English translations of dozens of books. Kairos tells the story of love in times of the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, Communist East Germany, and is hailed as a particularly compelling example of what has become Erpenbeck’s hallmark, the intertwining of personal, social and political histories.

Translated literature is famously under-represented in the UK book market, a fact that the International Booker, alongside a number of other fantastically passionate organisations, is trying to remedy.

But there is a lot more that needs to be done as the story of how I first came to find Erpenbeck’s book during my research, and almost didn’t, shows. It’s a tale of institutional and personal successes on the one hand, and a lack of recognition and coordination on the other, which is now being addressed on...

Read more