The end of World War II came with a hope, hope for a society that wasn’t just about the buying and selling of goods. Germany’s division into East and West deepened during the Cold War, with East Germany aligning with the Soviet bloc and West Germany with Western allies. The Berlin Wall, erected in 1961 by East Germany, physically separated East Berlin from West Berlin to stem mass emigration to the West. This tangible barrier, an Iron curtain slicing through the heart of Berlin, becomes a fecund ground for the 2024 International Booker Prize-winning novel Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann.
Erpenbeck, an author long considered a top contender for the literature Nobel, was born in East Germany, pre-1989 Wall collapse. Kairos is a remarkable blend of love and politics and sharply departs from Erpenbeck’s head-on treatment of mortality and historical discourse in her previous works.
The novel is archaically divided into a Prologue, Box I and II, an intermezzo, and an Epilogue. It tells the story of an unexpected, wild love germinating between Katharina and Hans. Initially reminiscent of an ultimate pop fiction narrative, Kairos soon transcends into the realm of a national allegory, as it voices the aspirations and confines of East German socialism. The magnetic bond between Katharina, 19 at the time, and Hans, who is in his 50s, also gives way to an exploration of the utopian dreams of communism and the global solidarity against fascism.
Like a museum
Erpenbeck once said in an interview: “I thought it should be possible to make a museum in the form of a book, a sort of exhibition.” The age difference between the protagonists serves as a narrative device covering two different eras in Germany — pre- and post-Berlin Wall collapse.
Psychological materialism is manifest in Kairos as the reader is routinely made aware of the material conditions (books, music, art, cafes) that lead to Katharina and Hans falling in love with each other. The narrative casts a sceptical eye on the notion of an unblemished triumph by exposing the complexities of East German society: its surveillance apparatus (Stasi), yet the remarkable wins of gender equality and political representation. As the story moves forward, East Berlin emerges not just as a setting but as a character, bringing out the ephemeral nature of both love and socialist aspirations. When Katharina arrives in West Berlin to visit a relative, she chances upon a ‘sex store’ and is assaulted by the freedom on offer.
There is a symphonic quality to the book, perhaps owing to the author’s operatic history. The prose has a mix of voices and an anxious absence of quotation marks. The reader too is a part of the narrative. What starts as a glorious, almost utopian, love story turns into a rotten landscape of shifting power relations. (Debased) language is seen as a manipulative force and a facade behind which there is nothing tangible to be seen. In one section, there’s a resonant Donne-esque image of Hans making love to the tunes of Mozart’s Requiem for the Dead. Dead people like Brecht haunt the story among a generation of old communists such as Lenin and Trotsky. It is as if hope has died with the fall of the Berlin Wall. A glorious socialist project slowly fading away.
The reviewer is an independent journalist based in Delhi.
