Impossible Love 1986

Berlin – Katharina is, officially, very young when she meets the man in her mid-50s whom she becomes his lover. She is intellectually mature anyway. The man, Hans W. , a writer, they met immediately on “11. July ’86”. Their eyes meet under the S-Bahn bridge at Alexanderplatz, behind each other, close to each other, they go to the Hungarian Cultural Center at Karl-Liebknecht-Straße. It’s closed, so they’ll have coffee. Together, these first steps will remain a secret code for them to return to the essence of his love.

The distance between Katharina and Hans is 34 years, in their love the distance seems small. It’s been 34 years since we first met, and she’s resurrected in Kairos, Jenny Erpenbeck’s new novel. From today, this is associated with the change of the era. “Was it a happy moment when you met Hans as a nineteen-year-old?” Catherina asks in the foreground. In Greek mythology, the word “Kairos” refers to a point in time that should not be missed. Jenny Erpenbeck, one of the preeminent writers of our time, dares to do something new with every book. In “Every Day Evening,” you experience five different forms of life in the difficult twentieth century. In “Go, go, go” I encounter a professor emeritus with refugees in Berlin in the new millennium. In Kairos, the novel of impossible love, she writes for the first time about daily life in the German Democratic Republic.