German author Jenny Erpenbeck wins International Booker Prize for tale of tangled love affair

Jenny Erpenbeck, author of 'Kairos', holds the trophy after winning the International Booker Prize, in London, Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

German author Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann won the International Booker Prize for fiction Tuesday for Kairos, the story of a tangled love affair during the final years of East Germany’s existence.

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.