Visitation

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translated from the original German by Susan Bernofsky

A house on the forested bank of a Brandenburg lake outside Berlin (once belonging to Erpenbeck’s grandparents) is the focus of this compact, beautiful novel. Encompassing over one hundred years of German history, from the nineteenth century to the Weimar Republic, from World War II to the Socialist German Democratic Republic, and finally reunification and its aftermath, Visitation offers the life stories of twelve individuals who over the decades seek to make their home in this one magical little house. The novel breaks into the everyday life of the house and shimmers through it, while relating the passions and fates of its inhabitants. Elegant and poetic, Visitation forms a literary mosaic of the last century, tearing open wounds and offering moments of reconciliation, with its drama and its exquisite evocation of a landscape no political upheaval can truly change.

(From Publisher).

Critically acclaimed Jenny Erphenbeck was born in 1967 in East Berlin. The author of The Book of Words and The Old Child & Other Stories, she has won various awards, including the prestigious Solothurn Literature Prize and the Heimito von Doderer Prize. Her works have been translated worldwide.

Erpenbeck's novel is carefully composed. In its twelve episodes taking place by the same side of a lake in Brandenburg, German history of the 20th century is becomes concrete.

This poetic novel from the prize-winning German author, Jenny Erpenbeck, reveals the life stories of twelve individuals whose lives are all connected with the same house by the side of a lake in Brandenburg, from the Weimar Republic after World War 1 to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A touching, frightening and potent novel of families, 20th century German history, and a small piece of land that sustains and clutches them all.