Not A Novel is a collection of the sort of pieces – some profound, others incidental – that naturally arise as part of a professional writing career. Many are concerned with growing up in the GDR and the experience of having the society that formed your worldview disappear…. At a time when former East German states vote in increasing numbers for the right-wing party Alternativ für Deutschland, Erpenbeck’s voice is all the more important for its ability to draw attention to a parallel world, one that sought to call a new future into being, rather than harking back to a darker past.

Times Literary Supplement, Peter Frederick Matthews

Jenny Erpenbeck

Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. New Directions publishes her books The Old Child & Other StoriesThe End of DaysThe 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 End of Days won the prestigious Hans Fallada Prize and the International Foreign Fiction Prize, and is the author’s representative text for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Her most well-known work, Go, Went, Gone, was longlisted for The Man Booker International Prize in 2018, of which New Yorker critic James Wood noted that the book would be cited “[when] Erpenbeck wins the Nobel Prize.” Following her insightful non-fiction essay collection Not a Novel, comes the new novel Kairos, longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature. In his praise for Kairos, John Powers emphatically stated on NPR that he fully expects "Erpenbeck to win the Nobel Prize sometime in the next five years.” An epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature, Erpenbeck lives in Berlin. 

cover image of the book Kairos

Kairos

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translated by Michael Hofmann

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 takes place 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 this period between states and ideologies.”

In the opinion of her superbly gifted translator Michael Hofmann, Kairos is the great post-Unification novel.

More Information
cover image of the book Kairos

Kairos

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translated by Michael Hofmann

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 by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans. Their passionate yet difficult long-running affair takes place against the background of the declining GDR, through the upheavals wrought by its dissolution in 1989 and then what comes after. In her unmistakable style and with enormous sweep, Erpenbeck describes the path of the two lovers, as Katharina grows up and tries to come to terms with a not always ideal romance, even as a whole world with its own ideology disappears. 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 this period between states and ideologies.”

In the opinion of her superbly gifted translator Michael Hofmann, Kairos is the great post-Unification novel. And, as The New Republic has commented on his work as a translator: “Hofmann’s translation is invaluable—it achieves what translations are supposedly unable to do: it is at once ‘loyal’ and ‘beautiful.’”

More Information
cover image of the book Not a Novel

Not a Novel

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translated by Kurt Beals

Jenny Erpenbeck’s highly acclaimed novel Go, Went, Gone was a New York Times notable book and launched one of Germany’s most admired writers into the American spotlight. In the New Yorker, James Wood wrote: “When Erpenbeck wins the Nobel Prize in a few years, I suspect that this novel will be cited.”

On the heels of this literary breakthrough comes Not a Novel, a book of personal, profound, often humorous meditations and reflections. Erpenbeck writes, “With this collection of texts, I am looking back for the first time at many years of my life, at the thoughts that filled my life from day to day.”

Starting with her childhood days in East Berlin (“I start with my life as a schoolgirl … my own conscious life begins at the same time as the socialist life of Leipziger Strasse”), Not a Novel provides a glimpse of growing up in the GDR and of what it was like to be twenty-two when the wall collapsed; it takes us through Erpenbeck’s early adult years, working in a bakery after immersing herself in the worlds of music, theater, and opera, and ultimately discovering her path as a writer.

There are lively essays about her literary influences (Thomas Bernhard, the Brothers Grimm, Kafka, and Thomas Mann), unforgettable reflections on the forces at work in her novels (including history, silence, and time), and scathing commentaries on the dire situation of America and Europe today. “Why do we still hear laments for the Germans who died attempting to flee over the wall, but almost none for the countless refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean in recent years, turning the sea into a giant grave?”

With deep insight and warm intelligence, Jenny Erpenbeck provides us with a collection of unforgettable essays that take us into the heart and mind of “one of the finest and most exciting writers alive” (Michel Faber).

More Information
cover image of the book Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck | New Directions

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck | New Directions

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

Go, Went, Gone is the masterful new novel by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, “one of the most significant German-language novelists of her generation” (The Millions). The novel tells the tale of Richard, a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a routine existence until one day he spies some African refugees staging a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz. Curiosity turns into compassion and an inner transformation as he visits their shelter, interviews them, and becomes embroiled in their harrowing fates. Go, Went, Gone is a scathing indictment of Western policy toward the European refugee crisis, but also a touching portrait of a man who finds he has more in common with the Africans than he realizes. Exquisitely translated by Susan Bernofsky, Go, Went, Gone addresses one of the most pivotal issues of our time, facing it head-on in a voice that is both nostalgic and frightening.

Winner of the MLA Lois Roth Award for Translation.

More Information
cover image of the book The End of Days

The End of Days

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Hans Fallada Prize, The End of Days, by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, consists essentially of five “books,” each leading to a different death of the same unnamed female protagonist. How could it all have gone differently?—the narrator asks in the intermezzos. The first chapter begins with the death of a baby in the early twentieth-century Hapsburg Empire. In the next chapter, the same girl grows up in Vienna after World War I, but a pact she makes with a young man leads to a second death. In the next scenario, she survives adolescence and moves to Russia with her husband. Both are dedicated Communists, yet our heroine ends up in a labor camp. But her fate does not end there….

A novel of incredible breadth and amazing concision, The End of Days offers a unique overview of the twentieth century.

More Information
cover image of the book Visitation

Visitation

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

A forested property on a Brandenburg lake outside Berlin lies at the heart of this darkly sensual, elegiac novel. Visitation offers us the stories of twelve individuals who make their home here. The narrative weaves in and out of history and time, shimmering through the public and secret spaces of a magical little house and showing us the passions and fates of its inhabitants. Elegant and poetic, Visitation presents a literary mosaic of the last century in Germany, tearing open wounds and offering moments of reconciliation with its dramatic stories and its exquisite evocation of a landscape no political upheaval can truly change.

More Information
cover image of the book The Book of Words

The Book of Words

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

In The Book of Words, Jenny Erpenbeck captures with amazing virtuosity the inner life of a young girl who survives the totalitarian regime of a curiously unnamed South American country (most likely Argentina during its “dirty war”). Raised by parents whose real identity ends up shocking her, the girl comes of age in a country where gunshots are mistaken for blown tires, innocent citizens are dragged off buses, and tortured and disappeared friends and family return to visit her from the dead.

More Information
cover image of the book The Old Child & Other Stories

The Old Child & Other Stories

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

The Old Child & Other Stories introduces in English one of Germany’s most original and brilliant young authors, Jenny Erpenbeck. Written in spare, highly concentrated language, “a sustained feat of verbal economy” (Die Zeit), the one novella and four stories in The Old Child go beyond the limits of the expected, the real. Dark, serious, often mystical, these marvelous fictions about women’s lives provide glimpses into the minds of outcasts and eccentrics, at the same time bearing out Dostoevsky’s comment that hope can be found so long as a man can see even a tiny view of the sky.

More Information

Not A Novel is a collection of the sort of pieces – some profound, others incidental – that naturally arise as part of a professional writing career. Many are concerned with growing up in the GDR and the experience of having the society that formed your worldview disappear…. At a time when former East German states vote in increasing numbers for the right-wing party Alternativ für Deutschland, Erpenbeck’s voice is all the more important for its ability to draw attention to a parallel world, one that sought to call a new future into being, rather than harking back to a darker past.

Times Literary Supplement, Peter Frederick Matthews

In this attentive prose, in her desire to map stories that are suppressed and rhythms of the heart that keep being forgotten, Erpenbeck is one of the most vital writers working today.

The Guardian, Natasha Walter

Erpenbeck has emerged as one of the most original voices in contemporary European letters. _Not a Nove_l is not just autobiographical. There are fascinating reflections on German literature — Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Hans Fallada, Thomas Mann and Walter Kempowski’s war novel All for Nothing — as well as exquisite descriptions of the writing process.

Financial Times, Guy Chazan

To read Erpenbeck’s musings on the majesty of folk tales or on life in the shadow of the Stasi is to begin to understand the forces that propelled her to become the deft, fearless author she is today.

New Statesman

Erpenbeck’s anger is palpable and this collection reveals both her creative process and the injustices that drive her to write.

The Guardian, Lucy Popescu

Erpenbeck is a virtuoso whose eye for detail depends entirely on a refusal to write what’s easy or straightforward. It’s a perspective conditioned by losing one identity and watching an entire country disappear in the name of freedom.

The Observer, Lauren LeBlanc

The texts collected here come from many eras and many moments and seem to fall around the reader like bits of glass….There is something terrifying but liberating about seeing a person construct herself and her history in a way that feels so opposite to everything we are told.

The Paris Review, Hasan Altaf

These essays, lectures and musings from the ever-elegant German writer Jenny Erpenbeck cover life, art and society. Jumbled together are thoughts on language, history and freedom, a moving piece – in the shape of an inventory – on her mother’s death, and finally, on Germany’s treatment of refugees. Clear-eyed and perceptive, Erpenbeck’s writing packs an emotive punch.

Tatler

One of the pleasures of reading Not a Novel is just that—it’s not a novel. Each piece stands on its own and is dense and lucid, demanding pause and reflection….Her words stay with you.

World Literature Today

This collection of essays, memoirs and critical pieces forms an intellectual biography of Europe’s most history-obsessed writer. Beginning with her childhood in East Berlin in the early ‘60s and ‘70s, the book moves in concentric circles, from the intimate and understatedly moving to the moment History collides with her life. A powerful voice singing the past into the present’s melody.

John Freeman, Lithub

An ideal introduction to the life and work of an exceptional artist.

Kirkus

As this collection makes clear, hers is a life (and writing-life) well worth examining.

The Complete Review

The impact is of a master at work—Erpenbeck ought to be considered for the Nobel.

John Domini, The Washington Post

The most profound, intelligent, humane, and important writer of our times. Forget the nombrilistes writing about themselves who have taken up so much of the conversational space. Jenny Erpenbeck is where it is all happening. She watches, notes, records, and interprets the world, not just herself in it. This is real literature: alive, vital, necessary, witty, beautiful, transformative.

Neel Mukherjee

Fearless, playful, incisive. Erpenbeck is unique.

Rachel Seiffert

Wonderful, elegant, and exhilarating—ferocious as well as virtuosic.

Deborah Eisenberg, The New York Review of Books

Her restrained, unvarnished prose is overwhelming.

Nicole Krauss

Jenny Erpenbeck’s writing is a lure that leads us—off-center, as one travels into a vortex—into the most haunted and haunting territory.

Anne Michaels, Author of Fugitive Pieces

Beautifully haunting.

Interview Magazine

The plight of asylum seekers as told through a retired university professor…Very moving.

Carol Morely, Guardian 2018 Best Summer Books

Acclaimed German novelist Jenny Erpenbeck has gone further than most in examining the ephemeral nature of human life. A heart-rending plea for universal tolerance and respect.

The Big Issue

Erpenbeck’s prose, intense and fluent, is luminously translated by Susan Bernofsky.

James Wood, The New Yorker

Erpenbeck’s metaphysical fictions are strange and beautiful, stern and compelling. This devastating work is as light as a dream and as unrelenting as real life…No reader can feel untouched by Erpenbeck’s inspired, and inspiring, vision.

Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times

This slim novel packs a mighty punch and richly deserves its numerous accolades.

Lucy Popescu, The Huffington Post

The End of Days is a brilliant study of loss and mourning. … Erpenbeck’s novel chronicles the twentieth century in a way that other Familienromane do not.

Necia Chronister, World Literature Today

One of the most significant German-language novelists of her generation, Erpenbeck follows up the celebrated novel Visitation with a heady conceit located somewhere between Cloud Atlas and Groundhog Day

The Millions

Erpenbeck’s writing is a lure that leads us–off-centre, as into a vortex–into the most haunted and haunting territory.

Anne Michaels

Dreamlike, almost incantatory prose.

Vogue

The brutality of her subjects, combined with the fierce intelligence and tenderness at work behind her restrained, unvarnished prose, is overwhelming.

Nicole Krauss

A true miniaturist.

Jenny Hendrix, Bookforum

Visitation adds to her compact scenarios something intangible and enormous, which works on them from outside their modest frames with a force eroding human history and its claims to establish durable meaning.

The Nation

Erpenbeck will get under your skin.

Washington Post Book World

Jenny Erpenbeck is the rising star of the German literary scene.

Cosmopolitan
Scroll to Top of Page