Why you might struggle to find this year’s International Booker winner in UK libraries – and why publishing suffers as a result

By Christophe Fricker, Senior Lecturer in German and Translation, University of Bristol

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.…

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