Things That Disappear

De: Jenny Erpenbeck

Narrado por: Lisa Flanagan

The bestselling and award-winning German author Jenny Erpenbeck has gained international praise for her novels including Visitation, Kairos, and Go, Went, Gone. Things that Disappear is an exciting collection of interlinked miniature prose pieces that grapple with the phenomenon of disappearance on scales both large and small. The things that disappear in this book range from everyday objects such as socks and cheese to close friends and the social norms of common courtesy, to sites and objects resonant with East German history, such as the Palace of the Republic or the lines of sight now blocked by new construction in Berlin.

Erpenbeck asks: “Is there some kind of perpetrator who makes things that I know cherish and disappear?” These things disappear, and yet do they really? Do they remain in our memories more fully than if they continued to exist?

Translated beautifully by Kurt Beals, Things that Disappear follows on the heels of Erpenbeck’s Man Booker-Prize winning novel Kairos and offers a window into a renowned writer’s sense of the past, and of her own self as a writer.

©2009, 2025 Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co., Kurt Beals (P)2026 New Directions Publishing Corp.

Love this book

However short, it is a pleasure to listen to another story by Jenny Erpenbeck. The things, the experiences misplaced, the nostalgia for the time past - simple human nature to hold on to our memories.