Which of the following books won the 2024 International Booker Prize?
- (a)Time Shelter
- (b)Kairos
- (c)Western Lane
- (d)Trust
Correct — B, Kairos.
Kairos, by the German novelist Jenny Erpenbeck and translated by Michael Hofmann, won the 2024 International Booker Prize, announced in London on 21 May 2024. Erpenbeck was the first German writer to take the award and Hofmann the first male translator to win it.
The novel follows a corrosive age-gap relationship in East Berlin in the 1980s, so a private story and the last years of the GDR come apart together.
Carry away the shape of the award rather than only the title: the International Booker goes to a book translated into English, and its £50,000 is split equally between author and translator.
- (a)Time Shelter — This is the right answer to the 2023 International Booker Prize — Georgi Gospodinov's novel, translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, took the award in the year before Kairos.
The hazard is a correct title attached to the wrong year. The prize is annual, so a recent-sounding winner has to be pinned to one announcement, not to a general sense that the book is current.
- (c)Western Lane — Chetna Maroo's debut novel belongs to the other award. It was on the 2023 Booker Prize shortlist, the prize for fiction written in English, which Paul Lynch won with Prophet Song.
Translation is the dividing line. The International Booker is judged on work translated into English, which places a novel written in English in the Booker Prize race instead.
- (d)Trust — Hernan Diaz's novel is an American prize story. It won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, shared that year with Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead, and had been longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize.
Written in English, it sits with the awards for original English-language fiction rather than with the translated-fiction award the stem names.
The International Booker Prize is awarded once a year to a single novel or short-story collection translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.
Its £50,000 is shared equally between the author and the translator, which makes the translator a named winner of the award rather than a credit line on the book.
It is easy to treat "Booker" as one award. There are two: the Booker Prize, for fiction originally written in English, and the International Booker Prize, for fiction translated into English.
They run on separate judging panels and separate shortlists and are announced at different points in the year, so a book in one race is not a candidate in the other.
An award item is answered by holding three things together — the year, the exact prize, and the book. The three have to agree before an option can be chosen.
- Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated from German by Michael Hofmann, won the 2024 International Booker Prize, announced on 21 May 2024.
- Erpenbeck was the first German writer to win the International Booker Prize, and Hofmann the first male translator to win it.
- The International Booker Prize carries £50,000, shared equally between the author and the translator.
- It is given each year to one novel or short-story collection translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.
- Eleanor Wachtel chaired the 2024 International Booker judging panel.
- Kairos is set in East Berlin in the 1980s, in the final years of the German Democratic Republic.
- Time Shelter, by Georgi Gospodinov and translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, won the 2023 International Booker Prize.
- Tomb of Sand, by Geetanjali Shree and translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, won in 2022 and was the first novel in an Indian language to win the prize.
- At Night All Blood Is Black, by David Diop and translated from French by Anna Moschovakis, won the 2021 International Booker Prize.
- The Booker Prize, the separate award for fiction written in English, went to Paul Lynch's Prophet Song in 2023.
Each option belongs to a real award story; the prize, the year and winner-versus-shortlist are what separate them.
- Reading "International Booker" as "Booker" and choosing a novel written in English; the international award is for fiction translated into English.
- Answering with the previous year's winner because the title still feels current — Time Shelter is 2023, Kairos is 2024.
- Naming only the novelist when the award is shared: the translator wins the International Booker alongside the author, and a stem can ask for either name.
- Treating the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as interchangeable with the Booker; Trust sits with the American award.
- Assuming a shortlisted book won. Western Lane reached the 2023 Booker shortlist, and Prophet Song took the prize.
Award items come in a few recognisable shapes: name the book for a given year, name the winner for a given year, or name the title when the author is supplied. A stem could also ask for the translator, since the translator is a named winner.
A stem can also test the eligibility rule instead of the winner — which prize a translated novel qualifies for, or whether a Hindi-language novel could be in contention.
Statement-based versions can pair a claim about the book with a claim about the prize or the year, and the halves have to be checked separately before the code is chosen — sometimes both are true (the CDS 2023-I item on Tomb of Sand is keyed "Both 1 and 2").
CDS_GK_2023_II_Q1182023The same award one year earlier, and its answer — Time Shelter — is option (a) here. That stem supplies the author, Georgi Gospodinov, and asks for the title; this one supplies neither and asks for the book outright.
CDS_GK_2023_I_Q632023Same prize, different mechanism: two statements about Tomb of Sand, both keyed correct, test whether it was the first book in an Indian language and the first Hindi translation to win, where this UKPSC item is straight recall of one year's winner.
CAPF_GAI_2021_Q1252021Almost the same sentence built on the 2021 edition, answered by At Night All Blood Is Black. The year and the option set differ, but the demand is identical — name one year's winning book — and neither stem asks for the translator.
UPSC_2007_GS1_Q282007The other Booker. Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss took the 2006 award for fiction written in English, so that stem is about the English-language prize while this one is about the translated-fiction award.
UPSC_2004_GS1_Q1142004Also the English-language Booker, and keyed to J. M. Coetzee as a twice winner. It asks about an author's record across years rather than the book of a single year, as this item does.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Kairos, winner of the 2024 International Booker Prize, was translated into English from which language?
- (a)Bulgarian
- (b)German
- (c)Korean
- (d)Hindi
Answerb — Jenny Erpenbeck wrote Kairos in German and Michael Hofmann translated it.Bulgarian is the language of Time Shelter, the 2023 winner; Korean is the language of Han Kang's The Vegetarian, which won in 2016, when the award was called the Man Booker International Prize; Hindi is the language of Tomb of Sand, the 2022 winner.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The prize money of the International Booker Prize is:
- (a)awarded in full to the author of the winning book
- (b)shared equally between the author and the translator
- (c)shared equally among all the shortlisted authors
- (d)awarded in full to the publisher of the winning book
Answerb — the £50,000 is split half to the author and half to the translator, which is why the translator is announced as a winner.That equal split is exactly what rules out (a) and (d), and the money goes to the winning book rather than being divided across the shortlist, which rules out (c).
- practice — not a real PYQ
Consider the following statements about the novel that won the 2024 International Booker Prize: 1. It was originally written in German. 2. Its author was the first German writer to win the prize. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a)1 only
- (b)2 only
- (c)Both 1 and 2
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2
Answerc — both hold for Kairos.Jenny Erpenbeck wrote it in German, Michael Hofmann translated it into English, and her 2024 win was the first by a German writer, so neither statement can be dropped and (a), (b) and (d) each discard a true statement.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following pairs of book and award is correctly matched?
- (a)Time Shelter — International Booker Prize, 2024
- (b)Trust — Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2023
- (c)Western Lane — Booker Prize, 2023 (winner)
- (d)Kairos — Nobel Prize in Literature, 2024
Answerb — Hernan Diaz's Trust won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, shared that year with Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead.(a) misdates Time Shelter, which took the International Booker in 2023. (c) turns a shortlisted book into the winner, since the 2023 Booker went to Paul Lynch's Prophet Song. (d) attaches the wrong award to Kairos, as the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature went to Han Kang.