Kairos (Jenny Erpenbeck)

This book won the Booker Prize in 2024. It is a love story with the age gap trope set in East Germany and as a back drop, has Berlin before, during and a little after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Honestly, i am not wrap my head around this book called Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck. Was it a love story? If so it was very problematic and emotionally abusive and borderline physically abusive as well. Was it allegorical? Then i am daft because i cannot understand the references. Was it historical? Hmm yes and no because some references to what is happening in East Germany and Berlin are weaved into the story but not much and not strong enough.

Katherine is 18 years old when she meets Hans who is nearing 50, on a bus ride. There is instant chemistry it seems because in the next two hours, they they just walk into his apartment and start a relationship which is in part romantic, in part disgusting, in part lovely and in part confusing and should have definitely ended after the first encounter. Oh did i tell you Hans is married with a young son. So there’s that also, but he seems to be in some sort of open relationship and Katherine is not his first rodeo outside his marriage. After a year or so of dinners and sleep overs and stole moments, Katherine goes to Frankfurt to learn something about theatre and stage art. While there, she is attracted to and sleeps with another guy. Hans comes to know of this and from here on starts his tantrum and emotional abuse that goes on for the rest of the book. He makes her miserable, keeps her on tenterhooks, abuses her, nags her, even punishes her physically, my god…so much abuse from a man who is himself cheating on his wife and with a girl 30 years younger to him. Katherine is not able to break from from this cycle of abuse because of the tenderness he keeps throwing in to keep her hopeful and hooked to the relationship. I quite hate Hans for it for being so emotionally manipulative and dumping all his issues on an 18 year old kid. 

The country is going through changes. Hans is from a generation that saw the creation of their country ie East Germany after the Second World War,  with the promise of equality and a different dream. And now he sees the fall on the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany and the dissolution of the state he once worked to build. Katherine on the other hand, does not have nostalgia for the old. Maybe i missed the parallels that were drawn between their relationship, its ups and downs and the unification of Germany. Maybe the references were too many and i am not aware of it all. But also maybe it wasn’t well written in the first place. I don’t know which it is, but at the end of it I hate Hans and definitely don’t want any young woman to get stuck is this kind of toxic relationship, even if it an allegory to something I didn’t really get.