Their novel Kairos depicts the catastrophic love affair of a 19-year-old student and a married man in his fifties who meet on a bus in East Berlin circa 1986.
Their connection symbolizes the German Democratic Republic’s “crushed idealism” and eventual “dissolution of a whole political system”.
They’ll divide the £50,000 prize.
The judges selected Kairos from a shortlist of six works, praising the “luminous prose” and rich quality of the translation.
Eleanor Wachtel, chair of the judges, stated that it begins with love and passion, but it is also about power, art, and culture.
