BookTalk introduces readers to a carefully chosen, provocative selection of novels for reading and informal discussion, considering the author’s writing techniques and the character’s personal journeys. Readings include translations of books from other countries and cultures in the search for fictions that illuminate the lives and understanding of those from all across the globe.
This class focuses on Kairos (2021) by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German by Michael Hofmann. This great post-unification novel tells the story of a fated romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s between a nineteen-year old girl and a married writer in his fifties. Their intellectually and emotionally complicated relationship disintegrates in tandem with the collapse of East Germany. At once bleak and beautiful, this story chronicles the couple's affair against this political backdrop with moving portrayals of love, obsession, cruelty, power, and loss.
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