Jenny Erpenbeck Popular Books

Jenny Erpenbeck Biography & Facts

Jenny Erpenbeck (born 12 March 1967) is a German writer and opera director, recipient of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Life Born in East Berlin, Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the Arabic translator Doris Kilias. Her paternal 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 theatres 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 (studying with, among others, Ruth Berghaus, Heiner Müller and Peter Konwitschny) at the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory. After the successful completion of her studies in 1994, with a production of Béla Bartók's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle in her parish church and in the Kunsthaus Tacheles, she spent some time at first as an assistant director at the opera house in Graz, where in 1997 she did her own productions of Schoenberg's Erwartung, Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and a world premiere of her own piece Cats Have Seven Lives. As a freelance director, she directed in 1998 different opera houses in Germany and Austria, including Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Aachen, Acis and Galatea at the Berlin State Opera and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Zaide in Nuremberg/Erlangen. In the 1990s, Erpenbeck started a writing career in addition to her directing. She is author of narrative prose and plays: her debut novella in 1999, Geschichte vom alten Kind (The Old Child); in 2001, her collection of stories Tand (Trinkets); in 2004, the novella Wörterbuch (The Book of Words); and in 2008, the novel Heimsuchung (Visitation). In 2007, Erpenbeck took over a biweekly column by Nicole Krauss in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In 2015, the English translation of her novel Aller Tage Abend (The End of Days) won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. In September 2023, the English translation of Kairos was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. Erpenbeck's works have been translated into Danish, English, French, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch, Swedish, Slovene, Spanish, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Arabic, Estonian, Turkish and Finnish. Erpenbeck lives in Berlin with her husband, conductor Wolfgang Bozic, and her son. Works Novels Heimsuchung (2008). Visitation, trans. Susan Bernofsky (New Directions, 2010; Portobello, 2011). Aller Tage Abend (2012). The End of Days, trans. Susan Bernofsky (New Directions, 2014; Portobello, 2015). Gehen, ging, gegangen (2015). Go, Went, Gone, trans. Susan Bernofsky (New Directions/Portobello, 2017). Kairos (2021). Trans. Michael Hofmann (Granta/New Directions, 2023). Novellas and short story collections Geschichte vom alten Kind (1999). The Old Child, trans. Susan Bernofsky. Published with five stories from Tand as The Old Child and Other Stories (New Directions, 2005), and in The Old Child and The Book of Words (Portobello, 2008). Tand (2001). Trinkets. Short stories. Wörterbuch (2004). The Book of Words, trans. Susan Bernofsky (New Directions/Portobello, 2007), and in The Old Child and The Book of Words (Portobello, 2008). Plays Katzen haben sieben Leben (2000). Cats Have Seven Lives. Leibesübungen für eine Sünderin (2003). Physical Exercises for a Sinner. Schmutzige Nacht (2015) Lot (2017) Other Dinge, die verschwinden (2009). Things That Are Disappearing. Kein Roman: Texte 1992 bis 2018 (2018). Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces, trans. Kurt Beals (New Directions/Granta, 2020). Audiobooks 2016: Heimsuchung (novel, read by Jenny Erpenbeck), publisher: der Hörverlag, (Audiobook-Download) 2021: Kairos (novel, read by Jenny Erpenbeck), publisher: der Hörverlag, (Audiobook-Download) Awards and honours 2001: Jury Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition in Klagenfurt 2001: Several residencies (Ledig Rowohlt House in New York, Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf) 2004: GEDOK literature prize 2006: Winner of the Scholarship Island Writers on Sylt 2008: Solothurner Literaturpreis 2008: Heimito von Doderer Literature Prize 2008: Hertha-Koenig-Literature Prize 2009: Award of the North LiteraTour 2010: Literature Prize of the Steel Foundation Eisenhüttenstadt 2011: Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize, shortlisted for Visitation 2013: Joseph Breitbach Prize 2014: Hans Fallada Prize 2015: Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, winner for The End of Days (prize shared with the book's translator, Susan Bernofsky) 2016: International Dublin Literary Award, shortlisted for The End of Days 2016: Thomas Mann Prize 2017: Strega European Prize 2017: Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 2018: Go, Went, Gone New York Times Notable Book List 2018 2019: The Guardian ranked Visitation number 90 in its list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. 2022: Uwe Johnson Prize for Kairos Further reading Bartel, Heike and Elizabeth Boa (eds.) Pushing at Boundaries: Approaches to Contemporary German Women Writers from Karen Duve to Jenny Erpenbeck. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006. ISBN 978-90-420-2051-1. Amsterdam Wiebke, Eden. "To Express with Words, was Always the Next," in No Fear of Big Emotions. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3-596-15474-X, pp. 13–32 (Jenny Erpenbeck interview) References . Discover the Jenny Erpenbeck popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jenny Erpenbeck books.

Best Seller Jenny Erpenbeck Books of 2024

  • Kairos synopsis, comments

    Kairos

    Jenny Erpenbeck & Michael Hofmann

    Jenny Erpenbeck’s much anticipated new novel Kairos is a complicated love story set amidst swirling, cataclysmic events as the GDR collapses and an old world evaporatesJenny Erpenb...

  • The Day My Grandfather Was a Hero synopsis, comments

    The Day My Grandfather Was a Hero

    Paulus Hochgatterer & Jamie Bulloch

    "This is a beautiful book, a masterpiece of brevity and depth" New European"This tense novella builds to a final reckoning" The TimesIn October 1944, a thirteenyearold girl arrives...

  • Pierre and Jean synopsis, comments

    Pierre and Jean

    Guy de Maupassant

    The fraternal love that Pierre Roland feels for his younger brother Jean has always been tinged with jealousy. But when a lawyer arrives at the house of their parents, to declare t...

  • Go, Went, Gone synopsis, comments

    Go, Went, Gone

    Jenny Erpenbeck & Susan Bernofsky

    New York Times Notable Book 2018; Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2018; Lois Roth Award WinnerAn unforgettable German bestseller about the European refugee crisis: “Erpenbeck wil...

  • Dinge, die verschwinden synopsis, comments

    Dinge, die verschwinden

    Jenny Erpenbeck

    Was bleibt, ist der Wandel.»Irgendwann, mitten in der Zeit knallt es dann, und das Jahr, das ein Jahr lang Gegenwart genannt wurde, verschwindet aus dieser Gegenwart und verwandelt...