A story of the twentieth century told through the various lives of one woman: an intoxicating masterpiece of a novel that kneads Time and History like dough
Jenny Erpenbeck is the author of Visitation (2010) and The Old
Child & The Book of Words (2008), both published by Portobello. Her
fiction is published in fourteen languages.
Susan Bernofsky has translated works by Robert Walser, Hermann
Hesse, Gregor von Rezzori, Yoko Tawada, Ludwig Harig and Franz
Kafka. She is the author of Foreign Words: Translator-Authors in
the Age of Goethe and is currently at work on a biography of Robert
Walser. Her translation of The Old Child and Other Stories was
awarded the 2006 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize.
[An] absolute must-read. It has stunned and moved everyone who has
read it
*Independent*
A short, musical novel... philosophically and technically
ambitious... shot through with an insight that almost blinds...
Erpenbeck's Chekhovian talent for letting us into the shifting
consciousness of her characters' various incarnations is such that
with each death our loss feels definitive. But while in Chekhov
there are no exits from personality, here there are no exits from
history... Reading Erpenbeck is like falling under hypnosis.
Exhilarating
*Guardian*
Always startling and profound, Jenny Erpenbeck is a master of
allegory. Few contemporary writers can so deftly paint the moral
interplay between light and shadow
*Chloe Aridjis*
Concise and moving... Jenny Erpenbeck makes swift work of the
one-life-multiple-outcomes conceit touched on by Kate Atkinson and
David Mitchell - and is the best of the bunch
*Daily Telegraph*
Erpenbeck has honed an extraordinary gift for focusing the sweep of
European history into intimate moments, captured in prose of a
haunting beauty and tenderness. Hypnotically involving
*Independent*
The End of Days prises open the troubled box that is 20th-century
European history and entrenches [Erpenbeck's] position as the most
brilliant European writer of my generation
*Irish Times*
A genuine European masterpiece
*TLS*
Startling and profound
*Guardian*
Erpenbeck's writing is so powerful and so poetic, her storytelling
so nuanced. [She] has important things to tell us; and she tells
them beautifully. Masterful
*Independent on Sunday*
In Erpenbeck's world, everything is connected... through tiny
parallels and repetitions - elusive leitmotifs that echo across the
protagonist's alternate lives... The wisdom of this novel lies in
the way its form subtly subverts death's permanence
*Literary Review*
If you think this sounds like Kate Atkinson's Life After Life,
think again. Moving [and] involving... its effects are arrived at
in a very different way from what we have come to expect from the
Anglo-American novel
*Sunday Times*
A wonderfully crafted, memorable read
*New Internationalist*
Compactly lyrical... Erpenbeck [has] condensed a century of
European history into the turning-points of a woman's life
*Independent*
Astonishing and deeply humane
*BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review*
A compressed epic... Erpenbeck possesses a remarkable gift for
shifting, almost unnoticeably, between the telescopic and the
microscopic, between the intimate and the cosmic, between the
vertical density of a lived moment and vast swaths of geological
time. Prepare for a kind of happy vertigo
*National Post*
[An] eerily powerful meditation on the ways a life can end...
[Erpenbeck] captures [a] primal quality through her dreamy
montage-like narration
*New Republic*
The End of Days is like the view from a plane zigzagging through
the skies over 20th-century Europe, creating a connect-the-dots
puzzle... [It] retains the sense of menace integral to any tale of
predestination
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
Erpenbeck deftly handles the constant shifts in narrative
throughout this complex novel. Hats off to Susan Bernofsky for her
translating skills. It's a masterly piece of work
*A Life in Books*
This is a beautifully written novel, impressively translated from
the German by Susan Bernofsky. The End of Days is a compelling
reminder that worrying about the unknowable will do nothing to
delay the inevitable. Masterful
*Financial Times*
The End of Days has the same dizzying emotional reach as
[Erpenbeck's] previous work... This profound meditation reaches to
the heart of a cultural world of spiritual intensity, social
utopianism and political catastrophe that has variously shaped
German literature - and it is expertly translated by Susan
Bernofsky. Incantatory
*TLS*
There is no one writing now who is quite like [Erpenbeck],
possessing such an understanding of the deep currents of history
while gifted with the ability to do such extraordinary things with
form. In Susan Bernofsky's lucid, seamless translation, The End of
Days emerges as a necessary and illuminating novel, alight with
intelligence and meaning. Surprising and profound
*New Statesman*
Sharp and powerful... Erpenbeck's novel intertwines the personal
with the grand sweep of history to great effect, underlining the
importance of both. I would certainly expect to see The End of Days
on the IFFP shortlist; for me, it's potentially a winner
*David Hebblethwaite*
Susan Bernofsky's thoughtful translation does justice to
Erpenbeck's masterly prose
*Independent*
A literary event
*MDR Figaro*
A worthy winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015,
Erpenbeck's echoing story of a single woman's multiple lives [is]
an inventive way of exploring the personal and the political. It's
the kind of demanding novel that bears, and rewards, repeat
reading. Spell-binding
*Independent on Sunday*
Her device of an ever-new beginning is a coup. But her refinement
in the form of separating the individual stories and intermezzi
gives the book the quality of a grand symphony... A great novel
*Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung*
An extraordinary piece of work... of immense ambition, both
literary - each 'life' comes with its own prose rhythm, language
and preoccupations - and politically... It is emotionally
ravishing, philosophically provocative and, thanks to this
wonderful translation by Susan Bernofsky, poetically lush
*Big Issue*
Wonderfully masterful and at the same time gentle and
insightful
*Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger*
A memorable and haunting novel
*Sunday Express*
[I've chosen] Jenny Erpenbeck's The End of Days for its epic sweep
and ingenious structure
*Observer*
This slim novel packs a mighty punch and richly deserves its
numerous accolades
*Huffington Post*
What Erpenbeck perfectly captures in The End of Days is the urgency
by which our lives are pushed forward, yet on the other hand the
transitory, perhaps futile, nature of human existence
*Belfast Telegraph, Irish Independent*
A beautiful meditation on the different possible lives of one
woman... The prose is spare and moving: the structure fascinating -
all echoes and repeated motifs down the troubled twentieth century.
Erpenbeck deftly weaves an understanding of how power and politics
play out in an individual life... An intense study of guilt, grief,
love and destiny... By the end of this concise novel [...] we have
experienced something profound and important. Susan Bernofsky's
translation skilfully conveys Erpenbeck's vision: to take us into
the dark places and shed light there in unexpected ways.
*New Books*
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