"Kairos" by Jenny Erpenbeck

An audio book.

Prologue - "Will you come to my funeral?" he asks Katerina. 4 months later she's in Pittsburgh when his son Ludwig phones to say he's dead. She doesn't go to Berlin for the funeral. 2 boxes of keepsakes arrive for her. She goes through the contents.

East Berlin in 1986. Katerina approaches Hans in the street. He assesses that she's 18. He's 50+. His son is 14. He invites her to his flat in the evening - his wife and son are away. He's a writer who studied musicology. He does radio programs. Her parents are academics. He puts a record on. Before it's finished, they're in his bedroom. He's had lovers before (he and his wife have agreed not to check on each other) but never in the family bed.

She watches his family holiday from a distance, then makes contact. She's in love. Her parents know. Sebastian, her ex-lover, wants her to show Hans his poems. Hans suddenly decides to tie her naked on a bed and lash her with his belt. He shows her photos of his ex-lovers and his wife's ex-lovers. His son Ludwig knows and is embarrassed. She sometimes resents the presence of his wife. He tells her that without his marriage he wouldn't be the man he was. They have an imitation wedding in their bedroom using net curtains as a dress. His wife chucks him out. Hans and Katerina don't see each other much - she's working in Frankfort. Vadim is a friendly co-worker.

They go on holiday to Moscow together, enjoying the grandeur. He's proud that workers read poetry. We learn about Brecht, about Soviet history - how presidents criticised predessors. He's into erotica. She gets a horse crop from work hoping to keep him interested.

He returns to his wife. When Katerina sleeps once with Vadim he criticizes her repeatedly, saying that she's wasted a year of his life. They split, make up. She still wants a child with him. They exchange audio cassettes rather than letters. She sometimes sleeps with her friend Rosa.

Mid-european revolts are compared. Several people who she knows have doubts about capitalism, wanting an improved socialism. Then it's 1990. The wall is down. Rosa teaches her how to shop-lift. She gets pregnant - but not thanks to Hans? She miscarriages.

In the epilogue there's mention of collaborators.

"She thinks to herself" appears. I'm beginning to think that this must be ok - she's a possible future Nobel winner and the translator is Michael Hoffman.

Other reviews

• Natasha Walter (The contours of a relationship are echoed by the collapse of East Germany ... is one of the bleakest and most beautiful novels I have ever read)
• John Domini ()

"The end of days" by Jenny Erpenbeck (Portobello books, 2014)

It's organised into 5 "books" with intermezzos. Each intermezzo suggests how easily things could have turned out differently in the previous book, and the next book follows a new timeline. The baby who dies in the first book lasts much longer in the second, set in Vienna. Her mother's a Jew married to a "goy", which helps them avoid persecution. In the third book the daughter joins a communist cell of revolutionary writers during the rise of Hitler. In book 4 she's just died in East Berlin, leaving a 17 y.o. son. She's a famous writer. In book 5 she's 90, deranged, a grandmother about to die. The wall is down.

The book ends by backtracking to 1941, tracing the journey of a clock and a series of books - heirlooms. The dying woman's son nearly bought them without knowing what they were.

Snow is a theme - a life-saver and a killer. And there's much more to the language than being a conveyor of plot, e.g.

• the secession of Hungary, say, might result in a pair of lips bitten raw in the case of one particular woman, perhaps even his own wife. In other words, there is a constant translation between far outside and deep within, it's just that a different vocabulary exists for each of us, which no doubt explains why it's never been noticed that this is a language in the first place - and in fact, the only language valid across the world and for all time. If a person were to study a sufficient number of faces, he would surely be able to observe wrinkles, twitching eyelids, lusterless teeth, and draw conclusions about the death of a Kaiser. (p.73)
• Her body is a city. Her heart is a large shady square, her fingers pedestrians, her hair the light of streetlamps, her knees two rows of buildings (p.213)
• there he will weep bitterly as he has never wept before, and still, as his nose runs and he swallows his own tears, he will ask himself whether these strange sounds and spasms are really all that humankind has been given to mourn with (p.238)

I wasn't sure about the book at first. It grew on me as details accumulated.

Other reviews

• Kapka Kassabova
• Eileen Battersby (both cerebral and intensely moving)
• Will Gore
• Deborah Eisenberg
• Boyd Tonkin