Jenny Erpenbeck

Wild do-gooder

Richard, a retired professor of Greek, decides to spend his free time usefully: he wants to lend a hand to a number of refugees who have exhausted all legal procedures. What follows is a story about so-called Gutmenschen or do-gooders, prejudices and a Kafkaesque bureaucratic muddle.

Facing the facts

Go, Went, Gone is a novel about the Europe of today. And that makes you face reality. With her sixth novel, Erpenbeck takes on migration, one of the most controversial issues of our age. Thanks to her careful sense of empathy, the writer manages not to get her fingers burned on this difficult subject.

The German author’s work has been compared to that of J.M. Coetzee and David Grossman, authors who, like Erpenbeck, do not avoid moral dilemmas and at the same time manage to elevate the political discourse above the level of the pamphlet. Go, Went, Gone is engaged but not activist, sharply analytical but not moralizing.

Jenny Erpenbeck (b. 1967) is a director and writer. After a career as an opera director, she debuted in 1999 with the novel The Old Child and Other Stories. It was followed by a story collection and five novels, among them Visitation and The End of Days. Erpenbeck’s work has been widely translated and rewarded, among others with the Thomas Mann Prize, the Heimito von Doderer Prize, the Hans Fallada Prize, the Premio Strega Europeo and the Europese Literatuurprijs.

Passa Porta, Goethe Institut, Beursschouwburg

Photo Jenny Erpenbeck © Nina Subin