German author Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann on Tuesday won the International Booker Prize for fiction for Kairos, the story of a tangled love affair during the final years of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany.
Erpenbeck said she hoped the book would help readers learn there was more to life in the now-vanished communist country than depicted in The Lives of Others, the Academy Award-winning 2006 film about pervasive state surveillance in the 1980s.
“The only thing that everybody knows is that they had a wall, they were terrorizing everyone with the Stasi, and that’s it,” she said. “That is not all there is.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
Kairos traces an affair from utopian beginning to bitter end, and draws parallels between personal lives and the life of the state.
The book beat five other finalists, chosen from 149 submitted novels, for the prize, which recognizes fiction works that have been translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. The ￡50,000 (US$63,611) in prize money is divided between author and translator.
Canadian broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel, who chaired the five-member judging panel, said Erpenbeck’s novel about the relationship between a student and an older writer is “a richly textured evocation of a tormented love affair, the entanglement of personal and national transformations.”
It is set in the dying days of the GDR, leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Erpenbeck, 57, was born and raised in East Berlin, which was part of the GDR until the country disappeared with German reunification in 1990.
“Like the GDR, [the book] starts with optimism and trust, then unravels so badly,” Wachtel said.
The International Booker Prize is awarded every year. It is run alongside the Booker Prize for English-language fiction, which is to be handed out in the fall.
Hofmann said he felt his style complemented that of the author.
“I think she is a tighter and more methodical writer than I would be,” he said, adding that the English-language book is “a mixture of her order and my chaos.”
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the national level — who have ruled the mid-sized state for 35 years. Polling third is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which spells a greater threat to the two centrist parties in several state elections in September in the country’s ex-communist east. The picturesque state of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering France, Belgium and Luxembourg and with a population of about 4 million,
Ugandan wildlife authorities have reintroduced rhinos into a remote protected area where they were once poached into extinction, an event seen by conservationists as a milestone in efforts to support the recovery of a species threatened by poaching. On Tuesday, two southern white rhinos from a private ranch in the East African country were reintroduced into Kidepo Valley National Park in the country’s northeast. Two more rhinos in metallic crates arrived on Thursday. There have been no rhinos in the park since 1983, the result of poaching. However, a private ranch in central Uganda — the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary — has been
LAW CONSTRAINTS: The US has been pressing allies to send warships to open the Strait, but Tokyo’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution Japan could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the Strait of Hormuz if a ceasefire is reached in the war on Iran, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi said yesterday. “If there were to be a complete ceasefire, hypothetically speaking, then things like minesweeping could come up,” Motegi said. “This is purely hypothetical, but if a ceasefire were established and naval mines were creating an obstacle, then I think that would be something to consider.” Japan’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution, but 2015 security legislation allows Tokyo to use its Self-Defense Forces overseas if an attack,
RSS