Gan Amin reviews Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
Kairos
by Jenny Erpenbeck
translated by Michael Hofmann
ISBN 9781783786121
Reviewed by GAN AINM
It’s hard to avoid the idea of allegory when approaching Jenny Erpenbeck’s International Booker Prize-winner, Kairos. Right from the cover, we are told by Neel Mukherjee that ‘Erpenbeck has written an allegory for her nation, a country that has ceased to exist— East Germany’. The Booker Prize’s own website asks us to consider the merits of reading Kairos allegorically, and most reviews will come down on one side or the other regarding the device’s efficacy.
=================================