Kairos
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3.6 • 55 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Now in paperback, Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos is a dramatic love story that unfolds as the GDR implodes—“an intimate account of obsessive, transgressive passion” (Claire Messud, Harper’s)
WINNER OF THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL TRANSLATION AWARD IN PROSE
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Erpenbeck (Go, Went, Gone) sets the dissolution of a May-December romance against the backdrop of German reunification in her solemn and subtle latest. After a former lover dies in the present day, Katharina receives two boxes of diaries, tapes, and souvenirs that chronicle their relationship from decades earlier. Erpenbeck then flashes back to 1986, when Katharina, as a 19-year-old student in East Berlin, starts an affair with Hans, a married writer. The relationship is intense, physically and emotionally, especially after she admits to a brief fling with a younger man. Now, while listening to Hans's tapes, Katharina reckons with the depth of Hans's sexual and psychological control over her life ("So far as I am concerned, your deception is the greatest and most critical defeat of my life," he says to her on one of the vitriolic recordings). Their relationship is marked by the tension between beginnings and endings, love and hate, truth and deception, freedom and repression. It's also a struggle of wills between two generations with a very different experience of the crumbling Socialist state. This audacious dissection of unruly forces demonstrates how endings are already present in every personal or political beginning, however promising.
Customer Reviews
Beautifully written/translated depiction of the end of the GDR
but...as much as I liked this insider's view of the disintegration of a world, the tale of an obsessive, increasingly abusive May-December "romance" was both sickening and sad. The "surprise" ending won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who understands the pervasive deceits of communist Eastern Europe.
Not a Booker!
I’ve only been able to get through about 40% of the book, but so far it’s just a racy and obviously dysfunctional love affair. Not seeing any of what the Booker judges seem to be gushing over. Maybe it all comes later, but come on already! Mater 2-10 or even Crooked Plow are hands down better than this. Are we once again seeing Western bias in judging?