Although we didn’t meet face to face, author Jenny Erpenbeck exuded a warmth that seemed to get transmitted even digitally and blurred boundaries and time zones in no time at all. Thousands of miles away with a time difference of around three-and-a-half hours, the German writer with soft eyes has a calm disposition that is oh-so-soothing. A storyteller, she has enjoyed her stint on the stage as a playwright and opera director managing multiple people, emotions, crises and pulling off productions like Zaide, K. 344, L’Orfoe, and more. Now, however, she values solitude more.
Erpenbeck is a passionate bibliophile who has inherited many treasured books. Her home is no less than a library where she loves spending her time. She values nature too and is grateful for all that she has achieved, including the global recognition that came her way on winning the International Booker Prize just two months ago. Her luminous prose, Kairos (published by Granta and translated into English by Michael Hofmann), impressed the jury with its ‘personal and political, beautiful and uncomfortable’ story that chronicles the romantic relationship between 19-year-old Katharina, and Hans, who is in his fifties, and the changing political landscape of East Germany. Her other notable novels include Visitation, The End of Days and Go, Went, Gone.
Before her India visit during the literary festivals across Indian states in early 2025, Erpenbeck spoke with t2oS in an exclusive interview.
Congratulations on the big win, Jenny! I am sure this is more special to you as this is your second time at the Booker Prize as you were on the longlist in 2018 for your book Go, Went, Gone. How are you feeling?
I am so happy to have won this honourable prize. It came as a big surprise and a miracle and I am deeply grateful. Since I have some experience of getting prizes but also some experiences of not getting them so I am always prepared for the case of not getting it. I read a few books that were on the list and thought to myself that they were much stronger candidates. I have been a member of some juries myself and, therefore, know that the criteria depend on a lot of things, not only on the story, its style, and the language, but also on the country and the political situation in the world. I have been occupied since then with giving interviews all the time, but as this is not the real work of an author I hope to be back to writing soon from July.
What did your inner voice say? What was it that clicked with the jury?
I think that in general there is a kind of a big interest in understanding why the East German state failed and if there could be another alternative to capitalist democracy; to be clear not an alternative to democracy but perhaps to capitalist economy. It was this short moment in history at the very end of the East German state when people had the feeling of self-empowerment and of inventing new forms of collective leadership and for a society based on the principle of solidarity. We can all see that something is needed, some new idea, to save the world, to save the environment and also us. There’s a strong right-wing movement in Europe as a result of different kinds of fear caused by the Ukrainian and the Israeli wars, the so-called refugee crisis in Europe, the Covid pandemic, to name just some of the difficult problems we are facing at the moment. The world is changing in a very fundamental way and so there is the question of how the crush of a system feels like, how people can deal with such tremendous shocks of change, and how they can keep their identity.
Someone from the jury told me afterward what they liked about my book was that even though they read it thrice in the process of shortlisting, they could still find some new aspects in the story. What I always try with a book is to escape this kind of plot-telling thing and arrive at something three-dimensional; if it is more than just a storyline that you follow by flipping through the pages, it becomes a space.
rpenbeck won the International Booker Prize 2024 for her book Kairos, which was translated into English by Michael Hofmann
Talking about Kairos, what was its genesis?
This was one of the stories that needed some distance in terms of time, and also distance in terms of feelings. Perhaps the problem is that it’s taking place in my lifetime, in a way in which I have to manage to make myself, or better, my historic experience, a material, like other materials, and this transformation to have a strange look at things that you know quite well needs time. We have this anniversary thing in Germany and I don’t like this kind of remembering the East German experience of history just one time in a year or once every 10 years, and I have always declined to be part of panels to discuss it. So, when the 30th anniversary of unification was over, I thought, ‘Okay, now I have my peace’.
Kairos starts with an interesting conversation between Hans and Katharina on the topic of death, which is something morbid. What was on your mind when you were writing the opening lines?
You can call it morbid, but I see it in a very different light. There’s another book of mine that starts on a similar theme. There is this famous saying that authors are always writing about two subjects, either love or death, and I’m definitely one of the ‘death party’. If you have death at the beginning of a story, it’s very clear that the book will also be a dialogue between the dead and the living. What is central to the book is that the dead people are asking a question to us, ‘How are we using our time and what kind of look do we put at our lives compared to the hopes of the past?’ It’s also a book about remembering how to deal with the materials someone has left behind after passing away. Sometimes when people are dying, secrets are revealed. Death opens a space in which a different kind of talk is possible, a different kind of remembering and a different kind of thinking are possible.
A lot of times it is the characters who give directions to the story. Was it the same for Katharina and Hans or did you already have the structure of the story in mind when you sat down to write it?
First, I thought I could manage to avoid telling a love story, but I couldn’t as it turned out. The initial idea was that I could perhaps make something like a story museum but I felt that some disturbance was needed. I have written very few love scenes in my life and I was kind of afraid of it because the intimacy puts you as an author in a certain kind of state. I call it ‘naked on the marketplace’. I’m Hans’s age now and I’m far away enough to not be seen as the subject of this story.
Since you just drew a similarity between you and Hans, is there any element of you in him?
There are some similarities surely, like our age and the fact that we both are authors. Perhaps, now that I am his age, I am more surprised how easily he used his little education and knowledge and love for art to convince a 19-year-old Katharina to commit her life to him. But I think abuse is rather a question of character than age. Emotionally, I am definitely closer to Katharina.
Beyond the relationship between Katharina and Hans, Kairos is also about the political scenario of that time, in East Germany, that unfolds in the book. It also felt like their rise and fall, their emotions represented the state of the country.
My idea of a mirror led me through the book. So you have both sides, east and west, you have Katharina and Hans, the male and the female, the young and the old, the truth and the lies, the dead and the living and so on. And you have the most fascinating question, how to cross sides and get behind the mirror, how to escape the hermetic system. Hans wants Katharina to be all open and visible to him in all aspects like glass, a human made of glass, but he refuses to listen to her honest answers, instead forces her to be the guilty one in a relationship. He uses guilt as an instrument to manipulate her. This is also to be found in the East German system where the government was very old and was not open to change. There was no honest dialogue possible between the old generation and the younger. So, when the wall fell many people were enthusiastic about becoming a Westerner while others were in total shock. Around 70 or 80 per cent East German industries were closed, and there were many unexpected changes. It is also a generational question as the younger generation managed to get along with the new system easier, while the older generation suffered from the shock of the transformation.
Moving on, it’s interesting to note that you are a trained bookbinder. Did your passion for the literary world start from there?
I intended to study book design. So, I first wanted to learn the craftsmanship. Then I thought studying costume design would interest me much more and, hence, I applied to the art school in Berlin. Eventually, I studied theatre science and opera directing. My love for books, reading and writing, I would say started even before I was able to write myself, at a very young age. I was born into a family of writers; my grandmother Hedda Zinner was a very famous writer in East Germany, my father John Erpenbeck wrote fiction and poetry, and my mother Doris Kilias was a translator of Arabic literature. I have inherited so many books in the course of the years (shows the room that looks almost like a mini library). I love to read. I didn’t intend to become a writer because there were already so many writers in the family and I had thought let me become an opera director. I have directed many productions and at the beginning of my writing career, I did both, but then the literature in a way got me.
Directing a big opera-style production is a very different creative process than writing a book, which is mostly a solitary process. You have experienced both and enjoyed both.
Theatre is a collective process; you are the director, you have to make some decisions yourself but there are always other people inspiring you and sometimes acting as a hurdle. You have to make many compromises and it costs a lot of money. Writing is the cheapest art ever. You just need a computer or a typewriter or perhaps a pen and some paper. So you don’t need much to bring your imagination to life. But you have to deal with all questions and despair alone. However, I got used to it. It’s been around 20 years that I have not directed anything.
Do you miss the stage?
Perhaps, when I’m 70 and someone is inviting me I would go back for just one production. I wouldn’t switch back continuously. I loved my day accompanied by good music but it’s physically very exhausting. It takes so much from you. It’s just like you’re running the whole day, you have to make so many decisions with hundreds of people asking you multiple questions, and you have to keep everything in mind from the folder to the stage to the light to the costume… not to mention the directing concept and the score. You are the engine (the motor) of the whole thing. I still have to make decisions for my books but it’s so less stressful. I love to sit in a quiet room concentrating.
What can we expect next from you?
My next book is not a novel or fiction but is about an Austrian poet named Christina Lavand. She’s a genius, a world-class poet who lived from 1915 to 1973 and had no intellectual background and came from a very poor family, grew up with seven siblings and her parents in one room in a small village. Nevertheless, she was obsessed with reading and became an author, unbelievable how beautiful and rich her language is. Apart from her poetry that moved me, she also wrote prose. So I wrote a book about her and my relationship with her and the surreal experience that happened during my research on her. There’s also another very special and personal book that I am working on — the autobiography of my father. We have been talking to each other about it for a while now and I am just about to start writing.
What else keeps you busy other than writing?
I like hiking and being by the waterside. We have a garden at the lake but it’s not the same garden that I describe in Visitation, but it’s beautiful. I like to look at plants and animals and to remember that there are other things in the world and not just human beings. There is a different kind of law at work when it comes to nature. My husband convinced me to play tennis, which I do sometimes as it’s always good to have some kind of sports when you are normally sitting at your desk all the time. I am grateful for everything that I have.