Synopses & Reviews
An epic storyteller with the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature, Jenny Erpenbeck has created an unforgettably compelling masterpiece with
Kairos. The story of a romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s: the passionate yet difficult long-running affair of Katharina and Hans hits the rocks as a whole world — the socialist GDR — melts away. As the Times Literary Supplement writes: "The weight of history, the particular experiences of East and West, and the ways in which cultural and subjective memory shape individual identity has always been present in Erpenbeck's work. She knows that no one is all bad, no state all rotten, and she masterfully captures the existential bewilderment of his period between states and ideologies."
In the opinion of her superbly gifted translator Michael Hofmann, Kairos is the great post-Unification novel.
Review
"Erpenbeck has an unsurpassed gift for showing how our ideas, passions
and choices are shaped — and reshaped — by passing time and the ceaseless
transformations of history." Lily Meyer, NPR
Review
"A novel that pushes deep into the evanescent gap between public and private lives." Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times
Review
"Erpenbeck is adept at exploring big subjects via the intimate relationships between people... [Kairos is] a clear-eyed book, morally neutral and the more interesting for it." Rumaan Alam, The New Republic
About the Author
Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. New Directions publishes her books
The Old Child & Other Stories,
The Book of Words, and
Visitation, which
NPR called "a story of the century as seen by the objects we've known and lost along the way."
The award-winning translator
Michael Hofmann has also translated works by Jenny
Erpenbeck, Gert Hofmann, Franz Kafka, Heinrich von Kleist, and Joseph
Roth for New Directions.