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Kairos

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WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024

'An ambitious story of love and betrayal' - Irish Times
'The ending is like a bomb thrown into your room -- you'll be reeling for days and weeks to come.' - Neel Mukherjee

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fueled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss.

From a prize-winning German writer, this is the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history.

©2023 Jenny Erpenbeck (P)2023 New Directions Publishing Corp. Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction World Literature
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This was a brilliant account of the peoples of the pre-1990 Germanies. Reunification. Believable. Unbelievable. There is a distant echo of reality where people get on with getting on wholly unrelated to large other parts of their work and lives.

Interesting. Knowledgeable. Reality.

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The book was well written and enjoyed the level of description and detail. The narrator was poor with obviously no understanding of the German language, which detracted from my enjoyment at times.

Interesting Read

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I disliked the age gap relationship and its sadomasochistic elements. Historically interesting about a time I remember well. The narrator did a good job and it is very well written. A German friend read the original and felt the same

Allegorical

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I thought the description of life in East Berlin was very good and the contrast it gave to the West. The relationship was an unpleasant read but wasn’t bad writing. The twist was good. I was expecting it all to build into a crescendo with the wall coming down but it barely mentioned that.

The narration was good but I would have liked a German reading it in English. The accent would have made it more enjoyable for me.

The twist at the end.

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I liked the beginning of the affair, the middle was repetitive and that ending that was supposed to be so jaw dropping I didn’t care about because the middle wasn’t great. The end

Alright

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