Haunted Territory: The Weight of History

Jenny Erpenbeck’s childhood, she has commented, “belongs in a museum.” Born in the now-defunct GDR; she was twenty-two and in university when the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989. In her most recent novel, Kairos, Erpenbeck narrates two breakups: one romantic, one political. An intense and formative relationship collapses, like the GDR, leaving behind a narrative ruin. In Go, Went, Gone (2015), she centers her novel on the moral question of asylum, through an encounter between a privileged German citizen and a small group of displaced African refugees. Erpenbeck, an epic storyteller and one of the most celebrated authors in Germany, discusses her work with novelist Charmaine Craig at the Wende Museum, whose mission is to explore the complicated legacy of the Cold War and its relevance to contemporary social and political issues.