Lust, Loss, and Liberation in Jenny Erpenbeck’s ‘Kairos’
During the war, and for a dozen years after, Austrian composer Hanns Eisler labored over his Deutsche Sinfonie, Op. 50. The piece melds traditional marches with elements of jazz, as well as the words of Bertolt Brecht, into a dissonant rejection of fascism. Asked about his intent, Eisler (who also composed the national anthem of the newly-formed German Democratic Republic), said he wanted to convey “Trauer ohne Sentimentalität und Kampf ohne Militärmusik”—grief without sentimentality, and struggle without militarism.
Grief without sentimentality. I struggle to come up with a better three-word description of Jenny Erpenbeck’s new novel.
tells the story of an all-consuming romance between East Berliners, from its heady genesis to its messy dissipation. Katharina is an inquisitive young intellectual, a trainee typesetter for a state printing house. Hans is a novelist working in radio, a war-scarred idealist and a still-married serial philanderer, 34 years Katharina’s senior. Their relationship, born of a
