Jenny Erpenbeck

Like NY times reviewer Dwight Garner, I am going to have to read it a second time.
Best explained in the reviews’ s words.

“Kairos” left me with an itch I needed to scratch, after the absolved and the condemned begin to flow west though the Brandenburg Gate, after all certainties are shattered. About German history, we read, “Whose job is it to go down into the underworld and tell the dead that they died for nothing?” .

Yes it’s about it East Germany, WW2, love, jealousy, totalitarianism and so much more.

Read it and cry.… (more)

Winner of the 2024 international Booker Prize, Kairos was at first a compelling novel about an inappropriate love affair, which eventually turns into a kind of allegory about East and West Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The novel begins in current time as Katerina finds out about the death of her former lover, Hans. She was 19 and he some thirty years older when they meet on a bus in East Germany before the reunification. She loves his looks, intelligence and cultural experiences, and is perfectly okay with the fact that he has not only a wife and child, but other mistresses. To his credit he sets the conditions for their affair, but it doesn’t bother her :” If you had a thousand women, she says, all that matters is the time that we get to spend together. How can he ever refuse her anything, if she doesn’t demand anything? “ it appears that he and his wife have an understanding: “Years ago now, the couple made a joint decision not to watch each other too closely. Only they didn’t want to make it public, lest it seem too much of a slight to either party.”
I didn’t know a lot about East Germany but the history of this affair coincides with the reunification, which is also true of the author’s lifetime in East Germany. The relationship becomes ugly as it goes on, and as a reader you cringe at what the young girl is willing to subject herself to. The second half of the novel gets more political as Katerina becomes more independent and the ending reveals yet another twist.
The writing is wonderful at times: “Is she always the same person, whatever she’s doing — or is she multitudes, like the figures on a carousel, who always go by one at a time? Until recently a girl who had shacked up with her lover, now spends her nights alone. The future trails its loose ends into the present until it becomes the present, settles on one or other human flesh, and its flourishing or brazen regime abruptly begins. “. Though the second half of the novel waned for me, I’m glad to have made the effort to research some of the background that makes the story more interesting. Her translator said he sees the novel as two sides of a coin, one the personal and the other the political. I’d be interested in exploring some of her other works.

Lines:

Kairos, the god of fortunate moments, is supposed to have a lock of hair on his forehead, which is the only way of grasping hold of him. Because once the god has slipped past on his winged feet, the back of his head is sleek and hairless, nowhere to grab hold of.

It will never be like this again, thinks Hans. It will always be this way, thinks Katharina. Then sleep puts an end to all thinking, and what happened to them both today is inscribed permanently — while they lie together, breathing peacefully — on each one’s cerebral cortex.

The longing to maintain control must be at least as powerful as the desire to lose it.

Why a love that has to be kept secret can make a person so much happier than one that can be talked about is something she wishes she could understand.

Years ago now, the couple made a joint decision not to watch each other too closely. Only they didn’t want to make it public, lest it seem too much of a slight to either party.

It’s bliss, says Hans, a state he’s rarely experienced before with another person: withdrawal from everything around about into one’s own essence. A kind of inner emigration.

What one generation sought to forget imposed itself on the next as a taboo, and what the older generation missed out on was performed, with a fifteen-year delay, by the younger generation, who never stopped to ask themselves why.

He is old enough to know how the end likes to set its roots first imperceptibly, then ever more boldly, in the present.

Is she always the same person, whatever she’s doing — or is she multitudes, like the figures on a carousel, who always go by one at a time?

By the time she has told him everything, he will know who she was, but by then she will long since have become a different person.?…, On her birthday, he is her only guest, he beats her with the riding crop, and says he wants her never to forget how he gave it to her, on her twenty-first birthday.

that monogamy is just an arrangement, nothing more. Basically, it was invented to secure the inheritance in a patriarchal system.

Coca-Cola, she’s noticed, is now on sale in the eastern half of Friedrichstrasse station, also in Pankow in the little store where she always shops, Coca-Cola same as in New York or Munich. Coca-Cola has succeeded, where Marxist philosophy has failed, at uniting the proletarians of all nations under its banner. Is this home?… (more)