Kairos
Book description
Jenny Erpenbeck (the author of Go, Went, Gone and Visitation) is an epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature. Erpenbeck's new novel Kairos-an unforgettably compelling masterpiece-tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Kairos as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This book deserves all the acclaim it has attracted in the last year: it's a fascinating, moving, immersive read. The plot is propulsive but it can be enjoyed on many levels. I'm very interested in the German Democratic Republic and found the historical/ political background of the novel beautifully rendered. But it is not a novel about politics, as Erpenbeck has said in interviews. Even as world historical events are unfolding around them, or even as they navigate the restrictions of a dictatorial surveillance state from which there can be no escape, the characters in this book are absorbed by…
I love the East Berlin setting of this book, just before and after the Wall comes done. It’s perfect for an intense, melancholy love story between a young woman in her late teens and a married writer who is older than the young woman’s parents.
As I read the book, I couldn’t help comparing their rocky relationship to the state of East and West Germany and how things were so contentious back then, even after reunification. I was also a college student in the late 1980s and related to the idealism of the young woman during the end of the…
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