Jenny Erpenbeck, Germany
(Photo by Heike Huslage-Koch - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Georgi Gospodinov (Георги Господинов), Bulgaria
(photo by "Mrs Robinson" at Bulgarian Wikipedia - Image in the public domain, taken and reproduced with the author's permission)
David Diop, France
(photo by Hermance Triay)
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Netherlands
Paul Lynch (Limerick, Ireland, 1977) won the 2023 Booker Prize with his fifth novel, Prophet song. Set in a near future Ireland, the book follows the life of a mother and scientist who fights to keep her family together as Ireland slips into totalitarianism after the rise of the right-wing National Alliance party..
Below, the official video of the announcement during the award ceremony, with Lynch's acceptance speech
Jenny Erpenbeck (East Berlin, DDR [now Berlin, Germany], 1967) is the International Winner for 2024, the first German writer to receive the accolade. Along with her American-based, German-born translator, Michael Hofmann (in turn the first male translator to win this prize), Erpenbeck won with Kairos (id.), her fourth novel. Set in the DDR, the novel describes the affair between 19-year-old Katharina and 50-something writer Hans trough the last days of the country and its system, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany and the social and political upheaval that follows.
Below, panel chair Eleanor Wachtel announces the 2024 winners, with acceptance speeches from both Erpenbeck and Hofmann:
Since 2002, the Booker Prize Foundation is responsible for the Booker award. In 2005, the Institution also established the bi-annual International award (to become annual, with different rules, from 2016 onwards).
Booker Prize
The prize was launched in 1969 with the aim to promote the reading of quality fiction in the UK and has since become the leading British literary award. Every year it rewards the best original full-length novel written in the English language by a British, Irish or Commonwealth author and first published in the year leading up to the award.
International Booker Prize