PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Jenny Erpenbeck is the author of The Old Child & The Book of Words (2008), Visitation (2010) and The End of Days (2014, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize), and Go, Went, Gone (2017). as well as Not a Novel: Collected Writings and Reflections (2020). Her work is translated into over thirty languages.
Revelling in complexity and ambiguity, Erpenbeck knows that no one is all bad, no state all rotten, and she masterfully captures... existential bewilderment -- Anna Katharina Schaffner * TLS * In this granular and, at times, shockingly intimate narrative of an all-consuming love affair that ultimately turns abusive, Jenny Erpenbeck has written an allegory of her nation, a country that has ceased to exist -- East Germany. No writer on the world stage can make the texture and details of individual lives articulate so seamlessly and unobtrusively the way humans are subjects of, and subjected to, history. The ending is like a bomb thrown into your room -- you'll be reeling for days and weeks to come. -- Neel Mukherjee An ambitious story of love and betrayal * Irish Times *
