Jenny Erpenbeck
Listen to full episode “005 - Conversation with Jenny Erpenbeck” :
Jenny Erpenbeck is one of Germany’s most celebrated authors. She’s written four novels that have been translated into English, a memoir, several short stories, plays, and a few librettos, including the one she finished just before we spoke.
Jenny writes about growing up in East Berlin and how her experience of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) shaped her worldview. Her novel, The End of Days won the Hans Fallada Prize and the International Foreign Fiction Prize while Go, Went, Gone won the Thomas Mann Prize and prompted the New Yorker critic James Wood to predict that she would one day win the Nobel Prize. In May 2024, after this conversation was recorded, Jenny and her translator, Michael Hofmann, were the winners of the International Booker Prize for her latest novel, Kairos, about a love affair that crumbles while the East itself falls apart.
Listen to our conversation now on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, and iHeartRadio. Follow us on Instagram (@howiwrotethisthepodcast).
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