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Why it matters
Erpenbeck aligns private manipulation and desire with the erosion of a political system without reducing either history to a simple allegory.
A celebrated work
Kairos
Jenny Erpenbeck2024 selection · Translated fiction
Kairos
In East Berlin in 1986, nineteen-year-old Katharina begins an affair with Hans, a married writer more than three decades her senior. Their increasingly controlling relationship unfolds alongside the final years and collapse of the German Democratic Republic.
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Read this if…
You appreciate psychologically exact relationship novels embedded in political history.
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Ideas inside
PowerDesireEast GermanyPolitical collapse
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