Kairos

Kairos follows a relationship between a young student and an older writer in East Berlin, set against the political changes surrounding the collapse of East Germany. Jenny Erpenbeck connects the couple’s private world with the country’s wider history, tracing questions of intimacy and power alongside art and culture. The German novel appeared in 2021.

Michael Hofmann’s English translation was published by New Directions in the United States and Granta in Britain; it won the International Booker Prize in 2024. The book’s historical setting and the unequal relationship are central to its premise, while the course of that relationship is left for the reader to discover.