“Durch die Öffnung der Mauer ist ihre Gegenwart in diese Welt hinausgerissen worden wie in einen gewaltigen Sog, in den ersten Tagen hat sie das Fortrauschen der Zeit buchstäblich zu hören geglaubt. Ist die Gegenwart fortgerauscht auf Nimmerwiedersehen? Und was bleibt zurück?”*
“Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck: A young woman falls in love with a (very much) older man shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. A story of passion, political upheaval and the traces of the past.
That’s a brief description of the latest novel by German author Jenny Erpenbeck. The novel won the 2024 International Booker Prize (in its English translation with Michael Hofmann.) It is a largely fascinating book, a love story set against the backdrop of a changing (disintegrating?) East Germany. The prose is convincing, the setting in this part of contemporary German history very interesting for me as a West German millennial.
But: Hans becomes obsessive, for long stretches it’s all about his jealousy, his (self-)destructive reaction to an affair of hers – while he remains married and keeps Katharina as his lover. For my taste, Erpenbeck spends too much time on the old man’s creepy desire for the very young woman. This could be a great book – if only Hans wasn’t so creepy and toxic.
*“Through the fall of the wall, her present was torn out into this world as if in a powerful undertow; in the first few days, she literally thought she could hear the rushing away of time. Did the present rush away never to be seen again? And what remains behind?”
Thoughts?