Michael Hofmann | |
|---|---|
| Born | 25 August 1957 Freiburg, Germany |
| Occupation | Poet, translator |
| Genre | Criticism, poetry, translation |
Michael Hofmann FRSL (born 25 August 1957) is a German-born poet, translator, and critic. The Guardian has described him as "arguably the world's most influential translator of German into English". [1]
Hofmann was born in Freiburg into a family with a literary tradition. His father was the German novelist Gert Hofmann. His maternal grandfather edited the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie. [2] Hofmann's family first moved to Bristol in 1961, and later to Edinburgh. He was educated at Winchester College, [3] and then studied English Literature and Classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1979. [4] [5] For the next four years, he pursued postgraduate study at the University of Regensburg and Trinity College, Cambridge. [2]
In 1983, Hofmann started working as a freelance writer, translator, and literary critic. [6] He has since gone on to hold visiting professorships at the University of Michigan, Rutgers University, the New School University, Barnard College, and Columbia University. He was first a visitor to the University of Florida in 1990, joined the faculty in 1994, and became full-time in 2009. He has been teaching poetry and translation workshops. [7]
In 2008, Hofmann was Poet-in-Residence in the state of Queensland in Australia. [8]
Hofmann has two sons, Max (1991) and Jakob (1993).[ citation needed ] He splits his time between Hamburg and Gainesville, Florida. [1]
Hofmann received the Cholmondeley Award in 1984 for Nights in the Iron Hotel [9] and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1988 for Acrimony. [10] The same year, he also received the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of Patrick Süskind's Der Kontrabaß (The Double Bass). [11] In 1993 he received the Schlegel-Tieck Prize again for his translation of Wolfgang Koeppen's Death in Rome. [11]
Hofmann was awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 1995 for the translation of his father's novel The Film Explainer, [2] and nominated again in 2003 for his translation of Peter Stephan Jungk's The Snowflake Constant. [12] In 1997 he received the Arts Council Writer's Award for his collection of poems Approximately Nowhere, [2] and the following year he received the International Dublin Literary Award for his translation of Herta Müller's novel The Land of Green Plums . [2]
In 1999, Hofmann was awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Joseph Roth's The String of Pearls. [13] In 2000, Hofmann was selected as the recipient of the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for his translation of Joseph Roth's novel Rebellion (Die Rebellion). [14] In 2003 he received another Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of his father's Luck, [11] and in 2004 he was awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for his translation of Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel . [15] In 2005 Hofmann received his fourth Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of Gerd Ledig's The Stalin Organ. [11] Hofmann served as a judge for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2002, and in 2006 Hofmann made the Griffin's international shortlist for his translation of Durs Grünbein's Ashes for Breakfast. [16]
Hoffman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023. [17]
His translation of Jenny Erpenbeck's novel Kairos won them the International Booker Prize in 2024, the first occasion on which the prize was won by either a German writer or a male translator. [18]
Maria Tumarkin describes Hofmann's review writing as "masterful" and "convention-eviscerating". [19] Philip Oltermann remarks on the "savagery" with which Hofmann "can wield a hatchet", stating (with reference to Hofmann's antipathy towards Stefan Zweig) that: "Like a Soho drunk stumbling into the National Portrait Gallery in search of a good scrap, Hofmann has battered posthumous reputations with the same glee as those of the living." [1]
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