Since 2016, the Booker Prize, the most prestigious award for English-language literature, has also been awarded for translations as the International Booker Prize. The joy and excitement when Jenny Erpenbeck and her translator Michael Hofmann were honored in 2024 for “Kairos” was huge.
Several nominations have been made for local authors. Clemens Meyer has been on the longlist twice, Marion Poschmann’s “Kieferninseln” was selected for the shortlist of six titles in 2019, and in 2020, Daniel Kehlmann’s “Tyll.” Kehlmann can now hope for the award once again. The English version of “Lichtspiel” (“The Director”) created by Ross Benjamin has made it to the final six.
Another German author on the shortlist is Shida Bazyar. Like Kehlmann, she has been living in Berlin for many years. Her debut novel “Nachts ist es leise in Teheran,” translated into English by Ruth Martin, has the same chances. This is a hopeful sign for German literature, as the English-language literary market is much larger than the German one. The £50,000 prize (€57,600), split between the author and the translator, will be awarded in November. Just the nomination alone brings £5000 and a lot of publicity.
The organizers of the prize, mainly funded by the charitable foundation Crankstar, have themed their advertising for the selected books this year as “Fiction beyond borders,” emphasizing literature that transcends boundaries. This fits well for the two novels translated from German.
Shida Bazyar tells the story of a family between Germany and Iran over four decades in “Nachts ist es leise in Teheran.” It addresses the struggle for democratic rights, fleeing from the Mullahs, and the impact of actions in Iran on people abroad. Bazyar, born in 1988 to Iranian exiles in a small town in Rhineland-Palatinate, received the Uwe Johnson Prize for her debut novel. Her second novel, “Drei Kameradinnen,” was on the longlist for the German Book Prize in 2021.
In “Lichtspiel,” published in 2023, Daniel Kehlmann tells the story of Austrian film director Georg Wilhelm Pabst (1865-1967), who fled to the US before returning to Germany due to difficulties working in Hollywood. He sought favor with the Nazis and refused to acknowledge the truth. The relationship with power once again confronts artists with decisions.
