Jenny Erpenbeck

Jenny Erpenbeck was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1967.

Jenny Erpenbeck is the author of The Old Child & The Book of Words (2008), Visitation (2010) and The End of Days (2014, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize), and Go, Went, Gone (2017). as well as Not a Novel: Collected Writings and Reflections (2020). Her work is translated into over thirty languages.

Read more on Kairos

Front cover of Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

A Q&A with Jenny Erpenbeck and Michael Hofmann, author and translator of Kairos

The author and translator discuss the political system which inspired the novel, what being longlisted means to them, and how translated fiction has the power to transport you to other worlds

Reading guide: Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann

A devastating story of the path of two lovers – a man in his fifties and a 19-year-old woman –through the ruins of a relationship, set against the tumult of East Berlin in the 1980s

An extract from Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann

Jenny Erpenbeck’s intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history

All nominated books

Kairos

An intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history. Translated from German by Michael Hofmann.

Go, Went, Gone

In a powerful response to a growing crisis, Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel explores questions about race, immigration, refugees and European identity. Translated by Susan Bernofsky.