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Jenny Erpenbeck

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Jenny Erpenbeck
Erpenbeck in 2018
Erpenbeck in 2018
Born (1967-03-12) 12 March 1967 (age 57)
East Berlin, East Germany
LanguageGerman
Alma materHumboldt University of Berlin
Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory
Notable awardsIndependent Foreign Fiction Prize
International Booker Prize

Jenny Erpenbeck (German pronunciation: [ˈdʒɛni ˈɛʁpm̩bɛk]; born 12 March 1967)[1] is a German writer and opera director. She won the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The End of Days[2] and the 2024 International Booker Prize for Kairos.[3]

Life

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Born in East Berlin,[4] Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the Arabic translator Doris Kilias.[1] Her paternal grandparents are the authors Fritz Erpenbeck and Hedda Zinner.[5] In Berlin she attended an Advanced High School, from which 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 later said, "the end of the system that I knew, that I grew up in — this made me write.”[6] 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 by Michael Hofmann was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature[7] In 2024, Erpenbeck became the first German writer to win the International Booker Prize for Kairos, which is also the first novel originally written in German to win the award.[8][9] "Thirty years have passed since the country in which I was born is gone, so I could dare to look back and take my time to carefully research what I lived through without really being aware of it," she said.[10]

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, Croatian and Finnish.

Erpenbeck lives in Berlin with her husband, conductor Wolfgang Bozic [de], and her son.[1]

Works

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Novels

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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Further reading

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  • 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

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  1. ^ a b c Erpenbeck, Jenny (18 April 2016). "Vom Ausgelieferstein". Freiburger Nachrichten (in German). Retrieved 5 February 2019.
  2. ^ Irvine, Lindesay (27 May 2015). "Jenny Erpenbeck wins Independent foreign fiction prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 February 2019.
  3. ^ Creamer, Ella (21 May 2024). "Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck wins International Booker prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 May 2024.
  4. ^ "Jenny Erpenbeck". New Books in German. Archived from the original on 28 September 2011. Retrieved 17 April 2011.
  5. ^ "Und immer wieder der Tod". Die Zeit. 25 October 2012. Retrieved 5 February 2017.
  6. ^ Erlanger, Steven (26 April 2024). "A Novelist Who Finds Inspiration in Germany's Tortured History". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 25 May 2024.
  7. ^ "The 2023 National Book Awards Longlist: Translated Literature". The New Yorker. 13 September 2023. Retrieved 14 September 2023.
  8. ^ Creamer, Ella (21 May 2024). "Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck wins International Booker prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 May 2024.
  9. ^ Marshall, Alex (21 May 2024). "Jenny Erpenbeck's 'Kairos' Wins the International Booker Prize". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 25 May 2024.
  10. ^ Creamer, Ella (21 May 2024). "Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck wins International Booker prize". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 25 May 2024.
  11. ^ Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis (2 July 2001). "Die AutorInnen bei den Tagen der deutschsprachigen Literatur 2001". ORF Kärnten (in German). Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 28 May 2009.
  12. ^ Inselschreiber. "Jenny Erpenbeck : Preisträger 2006". Kunstraum-Sylt Quelle (in German). Archived from the original on 23 October 2007. Retrieved 10 July 2008.
  13. ^ "ArcelorMittal Eisenhüttenstadt - Home". eisenhuettenstadt.arcelormittal.com. Retrieved 23 November 2021.
  14. ^ "Wingate Prize 2011". Jewish Quarterly. Archived from the original on 25 February 2012. Retrieved 23 November 2021.
  15. ^ Nick Clark (27 May 2015). "Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015: Jenny Erpenbeck wins with 'work of genius'". The Independent.
  16. ^ (www.dw.com), Deutsche Welle. "Novelist Jenny Erpenbeck wins Thomas Mann Prize | Books | DW.COM | 3 May 2016". DW.COM. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
  17. ^ "www.bundespraesident.de: Der Bundespräsident / Reisen und Termine / Ordensverleihung zum Tag der Deutschen Einheit". www.bundespraesident.de. Retrieved 23 November 2021.
  18. ^ "100 Best Books of the 21st Century". The Guardian. 21 September 2019. Retrieved 8 December 2019.
  19. ^ "Akademiemitglied Jenny Erpenbeck erhält Uwe-Johnson-Literaturpreis 2022 : Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur". Mainz (in German). 20 July 2022. Retrieved 21 July 2022.
  20. ^ https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2024 [bare URL]
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