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Today, two novels which challenge preconceptions of life behind the Iron Curtain.
Jenny Erpenbeck is one of Germany’s most inventive and lauded writers. Her novels The End of Days, Go Went Gone, and Visitation have placed characters’ lives against the changing tides of 20th century German history and politics. Jenny talks to Octavia Bright about her new book, Kairos, which deepens her exploration of the personal and the political, as the book tells the story of an all-consuming love affair between a 19 yr old student and a writer 34 years her senior, which becomes a way of exploring the end of the Communist dream in the GDR.
And we stay in the GDR to discuss a classic novel of post war social realism, Siblings by Brigitte Reimann is set in 1960 as the border between East and West Germany has closed. Elisabeth, a young painter, believes in an egalitarian socialist future, while her elder brother Konrad has defected, and Siblings explores the personal toll of these opposing ideologies. Siblings has arrived in a new English translation by Lucy Jones, who joins Octavia Bright and Jenny Erpenbeck to discuss the life and writing of its author Brigitte Reimann, a tour de force of East Germany literature, who died at the young age of 39 in 1973 but still retains cult status in the country today.

And our Editor’s Pick for next month is from Casiana Ionita who recommends Forgotten on Sunday by Valerie Perrin.

Book List – Sunday 25 June and Thursday 29 June

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck: Translated by Michael Hoffman
The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck: Translated by Susan Bernofsky
Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck: Translated by Susan Bernofsky
Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck: Translated by Susan Bernofsky
Siblings by Brigitte Reimann: Translated by Lucy Jones
Franziska Linkerhand by Brigitte Reimann
I Have No Regrets — Diaries, 1955–1963 by Brigitte Reimann:Translated by Lucy Jones
Forgotten on Sunday by Valérie Perrin: Translated by Hildegarde Serle