This book won the International Booker Prize in 2024. But since I am German, I took the opportunity to read it in my native language. Most of the novel is about a two-year love story between a very unlikely couple. Hans is a 53-year-old successful writer. He is married with a son. He also has a penchant for extramarital affairs, with some tendency toward sadistic practices. Katharina is 19 years old. Before falling madly in love with Hans and believing that all her happiness depends on her relationship with him, she had only a few brief relationships with boys her age, though she is open to relationships with women. Both live in East Berlin, the capital of what was then the German Democratic Republic. The reader learns little more about Katharina than that she is so incredibly “happy” with Hans, while Hans seems to treat her like an empty vessel into which he can fill his musical and literary tastes. Katharina wants a future with Hans, she even wants to have a child with him. On p. 129, Hans expresses his doubts in an imaginary conversation with Katharina. He thinks to himself, “damit wir eine Zukunft haben, muss es mehr sein als nur kaffetrinken und bett” (for us to have a future, it must be more than just drinking coffee and going to bed). And he shows his dissatisfaction with Katharina’s maturation process by saying, “deine Ansprüche an dich selbst wachsen höchst zaghaft” (your expectations of yourself are growing very tentatively).

            At some point, his wife discovers the love letter Katharina sent to Hans, which leads her to kick him out, at least temporarily. On p. 142, we read, “Nach 26 Jahren Ehe ist er wieder Junggeselle. Nur jung ist er nicht mehr.“ (After 26 years of marriage, he is a bachelor again. Only he is no longer young; this [machine generated, not the real] translation misses the play on words with “jung.”) On p. 160, Katharina quits her job at the state publishing house to move for an internship to a theater in Frankfurt an der Oder. She wants to become a stage designer and needs to gain experience before applying to university. The move to Frankfurt puts some distance between Katharina and Hans. At the theater, she becomes close to a colleague, Vadim. She does not really love him. Nevertheless, she sleeps with him. Katharina tells Hans about the affair. Hans does not take it lightly. His ego is deeply wounded by what he sees as Katharina’s betrayal. For him, it amounts to an existential defeat. And so, Hans embarks on an emotionally brutal path of revenge against her.

            On page 329, the Berlin Wall opens, followed by the West German takeover of East Germany. This includes the firing of Hans, who worked for an East German radio station. This section feels a bit like an afterthought. However, it gives the author a chance to let the relationship between Hans and Katharina fade away.

            Having not read a German novel for a long time, Erpenbeck’s Kairos brought back memories of a certain, sometimes seemingly artificial style of writing. For example,

“Hat sie, Katharina, durch diese paar Schritte auf die andere Seite des Bahnhofs Friedrichsstraβe das, was bisher ihre Gegenwart war, in die Vergangenheit gestossen? Oder ist dieser graue Bahnhof ein Ort, der die Macht hat, zwei verschiedene Arten von gegenwart unter einem Dach zu halten, zwei verschiedene Arten von Zeit, zwei Alltage, der eine des anderen Unterwelt? Aber wo ist dann sie, während sie genau auf der Grenze steht? Heisst das Niemandsland vielleicht deswegen so, weil einer, der da umherirrt, nicht mehr weiss, wer er ist?”

By taking these few steps to the other side of Friedrichsstraβe station, has she, Katharina, pushed what was previously her presence into the past? Or is this gray station a place that has the power to hold two different kinds of presence under one roof, two different kinds of time, two everyday lives, one the underworld of the other? But where is she then, while she stands right on the border? Is the no man’s land perhaps so called because someone who wanders around there no longer knows who he is?[1]

[If you have the opportunity, please check the official version of this section in the English translation of this book. I did not have a copy of the translated version.]

MHN

Nonthaburi, Thailand

25 Juni 2024

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[1] Machine translation by DeepL, free version.