A Q&A with Jenny Erpenbeck and Michael Hofmann, author and translator of Kairos
With Kairos longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024, we spoke to its author and translator about their experience of working on the novel together – and their favourite books
Kairos was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024 on 9 April 2024. Read interviews with all of the longlisted authors and translators here.
Jenny Erpenbeck
How does it feel to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024, and what would winning the prize mean to you? Would it also have an impact on literature originating from Germany?
I’m very grateful to be nominated – and consider it a great idea to nominate both the author and the translator. My mother was a translator of literature from Arabic into German, so I know how complex this work is, and how rarely the translator gets this kind of well-deserved appreciation. If I won the prize I would just be happy and celebrate it with my translator, my publisher, my friends and family. And I’m sure it’ll encourage English publishing houses to look with more curiosity at books written by German authors – and have them translated.
What were the inspirations behind the book? What made you want to tell this particular story?
It’s a private story of a big love and its decay, but it’s also a story of the dissolution of a whole political system. Simply put: How can something that seems right in the beginning, turn into something wrong? This transition interested me. It has a lot to do with language – since language is made to express feelings and visions as much as to hide or betray them. It can reveal something interior, and yet mislead people, or it can just be a blank surface. If you look at the details of what is spoken and where there’s silence instead, you’ll also be able to follow the invisible currents, the shifting power between generations, the techniques of manipulation and abuse.
How long did it take to write the book, and what does your writing process look like? Do you type or write in longhand? Are there multiple drafts? Is the plot and structure intricately mapped out in advance?
I write on a computer. As with every book, I wrote about ten or twelve beginnings to this book, becoming increasingly more desperate. Then I decided on one, then fell desperate again. I numbered the chapters I had written until then, wrote the numbers on slips of paper, put these in a bowl, let my son choose the order of the chapters out of the bowl, then I saw that it wouldn’t work that way either. Then I wrote the prologue, feeling relieved for a while. After having written half of the book my process revealed that everything was different from how I thought it was. The book had its own life, it seemed, and I had to adjust to it, and that is what I tried.
Jenny Erpenbeck
It’s a private story of a big love and its decay, but it’s also a story of the dissolution of a whole political system
What was the experience of working with the book’s translator, Michael Hofmann, like? How closely did you work together on the English edition? Were there any surprising moments during your collaboration, or joyful moments, or challenges?
It was our first work together and I was grateful to have such an experienced translator by my side.
Tell us about your reading habits. Which book or books are you reading at the moment, and why?
For books that I’m just reading ‘for fun’, I, like everyone else, often read in the morning before getting up, then at breakfast and lunch, when alone, and on train rides. I listen to audiobooks while driving, and, if not too tired, I read at night in bed. During the daytime, I sometimes spend hours reading, but then mostly books that I need for my own work. (Happy to call that part of my work.) Just now I’m reading Landscapes by Christine Lai. We met recently at a festival and had a good conversation. She has a very special way of writing about violence, loss, and memory.
What was your path to becoming a reader – what did you read as a child and what role did storytelling play in your younger years? Was there one book in particular that captured your imagination?
As a small child I was desperately waiting for the moment when I could read by myself, after having listened to so many stories read to me by my parents. From the moment I could make sense of letters on a page, you would always find me in some corner with a book in my lap. I first made my way through all the classical literature for kids, and a bit later through all kind of books, in that way. Not only in my younger years, but throughout my whole life, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, in their magic fantasy as well as in their often cruel realism, were and still are of great importance to me as a kind of unsolvable enigma.
Tell us about a book originally written in German that you would recommend to English readers. How has it left a lasting impression on you?
Marlen Haushofers The Wall. It’s the best book I’ve ever read when it comes to the unsettling experience of incomprehensible destruction, the so-called evil, in the world.
Do you have a favourite International Booker Prize-winning or shortlisted novel and, if so, why?
In 2005 the Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Almost the entire body of his work has been translated into German by my mum. So Mahfouz’s Cairo was always present in our East Berlin life. I remember it being a major family excitement when he won the Nobel Prize in 1988. His wisdom about what life and death mean impressed me deeply.
What role do you think translated fiction plays in promoting a more inclusive and diverse literary canon, and how can we encourage more people to read it?
The English readership is perhaps a bit spoiled by having so many important authors originally writing in English, but there are so many more countries in the world that have essential stories to tell. There are so many kinds of freedom to discover: in the way a story is told, in surprising settings, images, comparisons. There are so many lives not only to discover but to dive into by reading – so called ‘other’ worlds that by turning page after page become familiar to you, since we all are human beings and live on one planet.
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Michael Hofmann
How does it feel to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024 – an award which recognises authors and translators equally – and what would winning the prize mean to you?
I suppose in order, the prize is for book, author and translator. I had the great good luck to be offered this brave and clever novel by the author. To be on equal footing with the author is a rare and wonderful and unfair thing for a translator.
How long did it take to translate the book, and what does your working process look like? Do you read the book multiple times first? Do you translate it in the order it’s written?
I forget – perhaps a year. I did read it before working on it, which isn’t always the case. I read it ‘multiple times’ later, in English – perhaps twenty, when revising it. This is always my practice.
Aside from the book, what other writing did you draw inspiration from for your translation?
No other writing; life. My family, like Jenny Erpenbeck’s, was originally from East Germany. I was at least somewhat familiar with it, at the time she was describing it, in the 80s and 90s.
What was your path to becoming a reader – what did you read as a child and what role did storytelling play in your younger years? Was there one book in particular that captured your imagination?
My father, Gert Hofmann, was a German novelist. You could take or leave a literary upbringing; there was no other; I took it.
Tell us about your path to becoming a translator. Were there any books that inspired you to embark on this career?
We spoke German at home; I grew up bilingual in England and Scotland and the U.S. Once I stopped desiring not to be German, and began reading German books of my own volition, the way was clear, though the bilingualism – being on an easy footing with two languages, translation, as I wrote somewhere, ‘not a naturally occurring activity’ – was a hindrance. I could then start turning myself into an open-cast mine for words. That’s an East German thing.
Michael Hofmann
It incorporates distance and difference and teaches empathy. Down with the monstrous idiocy of relatability!
— Michael Hofmann on the importance of translated fiction
What are your reading habits under normal circumstances? Which book or books are you reading at the moment, and why?
There are no normal circumstances. I read for work, very rarely for pleasure, though I do enjoy it. I am currently reading the Russian novelist Andrey Platonov.
Tell us about a book originally written in German that you would recommend to English readers. How has it left a lasting impression on you?
That would be Hans Joachim Schädlich’s novel Tallhover, about a German police spy who lived to be 150. Demand for his services never ceased, so he went on living.
Which work of translated fiction do you wish you had translated yourself, and what aspects of this particular work do you admire most?
Proust. Proust.
Do you have a favourite International Booker Prize-winning or shortlisted novel and, if so, why?
A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen. Because it’s a funny book, and jokes are hard.
What role do you think translated fiction plays in promoting a more inclusive and diverse literary canon, and how can we encourage more people to read it?
Absolutely critical. It incorporates distance and difference and teaches empathy. Down with the monstrous idiocy of relatability! Books don’t exist to be about you.
- By
- Jenny Erpenbeck
- Translated by
- Michael Hofmann
- Published by
- Granta Books
An intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history. Translated from German by Michael Hofmann.
