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The bestselling and award-winning German author Jenny Erpenbeck has gained international praise for her novels including Visitation, Kairos, and Go, Went, Gone.
Things that Disappear is an exciting collection of interlinked miniature prose pieces that grapple with the phenomenon of disappearance on scales both large and small. The things that disappear in these pages range from everyday objects such as socks and cheese to close friends and the social norms of common courtesy, to sites and objects resonant with East German history, such as the Palace of the Republic or the lines of sight now blocked by new construction in Berlin. Erpenbeck asks: "Is there some kind of perpetrator who makes things that I know cherish and disappear?" These things disappear, and yet do they really? Do they remain in our memories more fully than if they continued to exist? Translated beautifully by Kurt Beals, Things that Disappear follows on the heels of Erpenbeck's Man Booker-Prize winning novel Kairos and offers a window into a renowned writer's sense of the past, and of her own self as a writer.
"Those who indulge her idiosyncratic prose will be rewarded, finding in this slim book a wistful record of memory and loss. Ephemeral musings, both peculiar and poetic." —Kirkus Reviews
"Wonderful, elegant, and exhilarating―ferocious as well as virtuosic." ―The New York Review of Books
" The impact is of a master at work―Erpenbeck ought to be considered for the Nobel." ―The Washington Post
"The most profound, intelligent, humane, and important writer of our times." ―Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others
"Her retrained, unvarnished prose is overwhelming." ―Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love
This information about Things That Disappear was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the Arabic translator Doris Kilias. Her grandparents are the authors Fritz Erpenbeck and Hedda Zinner. In Berlin she attended an Advanced High School, where she graduated in 1985. She then completed a two-year apprenticeship as a bookbinder before working at several theaters as props and wardrobe supervisor.
From 1988 to 1990 Erpenbeck studied theatre at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1990 she changed her studies to Music Theater Director at the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory. After the successful completion of her studies in 1994 she spent some time at first as an assistant director at the opera house in Grazthen, then as a freelance director.
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Name Pronunciation
Jenny Erpenbeck: UHR-pen-beck
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