[3][4] The novel tells the story of a doomed and increasingly toxic age-gap relationship, set against the backdrop of the collapse of the GDR, with the two lovers seemingly embodying East Germany's crushed idealism.

[5] Eleanor Wachtel, the chair of the International Booker Prize 2024 judges, said of the book after it won the prize: "In luminous prose, Jenny Erpenbeck exposes the complexity of a relationship between a young student and a much older writer, tracking the daily tensions and reversals that mark their intimacy, staying close to the apartments, cafés, and city streets, workplaces and foods of East Berlin.

"[7] Erpenbeck is the first German writer to win the annual International Booker Prize,[8] which is awarded jointly to the author and translator of the best work of fiction translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.

TIME Magazine named Kairos one of the 100 must-read books of 2023 and praised Erpenbeck's prose.

[10][11] Dwight Garner, writing for the New York Times, called the novel "profound" and "moving" and praised Erpenbeck as "among the most sophisticated and powerful novelists we have.