Kairos

By: Jenny Erpenbeck

Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan

Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

Jenny Erpenbeck’s much anticipated new novel Kairos is a complicated love story set amidst swirling, cataclysmic events as the GDR collapses and an old world evaporates.

Jenny Erpenbeck (the author of Go, Went, Gone and Visitation) is an epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature. Erpenbeck’s new novel Kairos—an unforgettably compelling masterpiece—tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when 19-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his 50s named Hans. Their passionate yet difficult long-running affair takes place against the background of the declining GDR, through the upheavals wrought by its dissolution in 1989, and then what comes after.

In her unmistakable style and with enormous sweep, Erpenbeck describes the path of two lovers as Katharina grows up and tries to come to terms with a not always ideal romance, even as a whole world with its own ideology disappears.

©2021, 2023 Penguin Verlag, Munchen; Michael Hofmann (P)2023 New Directions Publishing Corp.

This is an amazing. Of time in history.

I was stationed in Berlin in the army in the 1970s and this time period is very interesting and I loved how this story portrayed the difference between the east in the west

Fabulous reader and breathtaking story!

An (illicit!) love affair at first gathers steam while the GDR disintegrates. I could not stop listening. When my mind wandered, I had to back up and replay, and while I appreciated the immediate gratification of the Audible purchase, I also ordered the book as I want to see the people and place names and more.

Well Written and Read

Haunting story on personal level of the former East Berlin. First rate by an excellent writer.

proud of myself for finishing this one

because I could not wait for it to end. I kept thinking, hoping, there would be more - something, anything, a point - but it never came.

Resonant Layers

A love-gone-very-wrong story inside a culture-gone-very-wrong story. Not for people who avoid sad truths. Loved the very clear and visual prose. When themes and events line up, she makes you feel like a smart reader and not like you’re reading someone’s highlighted copy. It’s subtle and compelling. I wolfed it down in a week.

Unbelievable

Well written but so repetitive that it was boring. Please don’t waste your time find another book written by Erpenbeck perhaps “Go, Went, Gone”.

The story goes on and on and on.

I did not like the story and it seemed to be one that was monotonous and repetitive to hear. This was a surprise to me since I usually like Erpenbeck’s writing.

Empty

Listening to this audiobook reminded me of the time I had to finish a book because it was a school assignment. No character in this book is real and therefore impossible to engage with.

A sick man

This was hard to listen to, though I stuck with it for the portrait of East Germany in its transition years. But I could not stand Hans, a man in his fifties who obsessively torments his barely post-teenage lover for her failure of fidelity—even though he is married to someone else throughout! A sick relationship.

A struggle to finish this

As an abused woman, this was cringe worthy to listen. I didn’t get any sense of lessons learned though. The thread between East Germany falling and the relationship failing was just not appealing. Hans was a prick, pure and simple.