Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

 

It is the end of the 1980s in East Berlin.  Katharina is nineteen when she meets and starts an affair with Hans, a man in his fifties who is a decade older than her own father.  He is married but a serial adulterer and his wife knows about the affair but doesn't seem to care.  Her friends tell her that its a bad idea but the two seem entranced with each other.

Over the next two years, we watch as the affair sours just as the East German government is souring and failing as reunification looms.  Hans is controlling, desperate to dictate every moment of Katharina's life.  She begins to rebel against this and eventually has an affair with a man close to her own age.  This insures that Hans beats her down psychologically for the rest of their time together.  

At the end of the novel, reunification has happened.  Katharina has moved on, into a theatre career in set design and finds a more stable love.  Hans is caught in the fact that his talents are no longer needed as a radio commentator and that his ideas have passed.  His relevance is over and he has a hard time adjusting to the new reality of reunification.

This book is on the 2024 shortlist for the International Booker Prize.  It is an allegory using the doomed love affair to shadow the doomed government of East Germany and the control of the government similar to the control Hans needs to have over all around him.  Hans is a despicable character and we only learn the depths of his degradation at the end of the novel but Katharina also has issues as the hope of the future.  Jenny Erpenbeck is recognized as one of the leading voices of German literature and she lived through this time period and experienced much of what was happening.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.