Jenny Erpenbeck and Kaja Schjerven Mollerin on The end of days

In German Jenny Erpenbeck’s most recent novel, The End of Days, her main character dies a total of five times; first as a baby, then as a young girl in a Europe between two world wars, then as a revolutionary fallen from grace in one of Stalin’s Siberian camps, then as a celebrated East-German writer and lastly as a 91 year old in a nursing home in a reunited Berlin. Erpenbeck is considered one of Germany’s leading contemporary writers. In an original, sharp and truly characteristic voice, Erpenbeck puts Europe’s recent history into writing. The Jewish pogroms prior to world war two, the choices and fates of individuals in the face of our century’s revolutionary powers, and how the aftermath of these choices plays out in contemporary Germany. Erpenbeck was first translated into Norwegian in 2017 with the novel Go, Went, Gone, which was recently longlisted for the International Man Booker Prize. The novel tells the story of a retired Classics professor who takes an interest in a group of hunger striking African migrants and their destiny, another piece of central history in a finely tuned literary form. Hear Erpenbeck in conversation with literary critic Kaja Schjerven Mollerin. The conversation took place on May 30th 2018.

LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.

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