Overview

Jenny Erpenbeck’s highly acclaimed novel Go, Went, Gone was a New York Times notable book and launched one of Germany’s most admired writers into the American spotlight. In the New Yorker, James Wood wrote: “When Erpenbeck wins the Nobel Prize in a few years, I suspect that this novel will be cited.”         On the heels of this literary breakthrough comes  , a book of personal, profound, often humorous meditations and reflections. Erpenbeck writes, “With this collection of texts, I am looking back for the first time at many years of my life, at the thoughts that filled my life from day to day.”         Starting with her childhood days in East Berlin (“I start with my life as a schoolgirl … my own conscious life begins at the same time as the socialist life of Leipziger Strasse”), Not a Novel provides a glimpse of growing up in the GDR and of what it was like to be twenty-two when the wall collapsed; it takes us through Erpenbeck’s early adult years, working in a bakery after immersing herself in the worlds of music, theater, and opera, and ultimately discovering her path as a writer.         There are lively essays about her literary influences (Thomas Bernhard, the Brothers Grimm, Kafka, and Thomas Mann), unforgettable reflections on the forces at work in her novels (including history, silence, and time), and scathing commentaries on the dire situation of America and Europe today. “Why do we still hear laments for the Germans who died attempting to flee over the wall, but almost none for the countless refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean in recent years, turning the sea into a giant grave?”         With deep insight and warm intelligence, Jenny Erpenbeck provides us with a collection of unforgettable essays that take us into the heart and mind of “one of the finest and most exciting writers alive” (Michel Faber).

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Reviews

Her restrained, unvarnished prose is overwhelming. -- Nicole Krauss Erpenbeck's writing is a lure that leads us-off-center as into a vortex-to the most haunted and haunting territory. -- Anne Michaels Wonderful, elegant, and exhilarating-ferocious as well as virtuosic. -- Deborah Eisenberg - The New York Review of Books

Her restrained, unvarnished prose is overwhelming. -- Nicole Krauss The most profound, intelligent, humane, and important writer of our times. Forget the nombrilistes writing about themselves who have taken up so much of the conversational space. Jenny Erpenbeck is where it is all happening. She watches, notes, records, and interprets the world, not just herself in it. This is real literature: alive, vital, necessary, witty, beautiful, transformative. -- Neel Mukherjee Erpenbeck's writing is a lure that leads us-off-center as into a vortex-to the most haunted and haunting territory. -- Anne Michaels The impact is of a master at work-Erpenbeck ought to be considered for the Nobel. -- John Domini - The Washington Post Wonderful, elegant, and exhilarating-ferocious as well as virtuosic. -- Deborah Eisenberg - The New York Review of Books Fearless, playful, incisive. Erpenbeck is unique -- Rachel Seiffert

Erpenbeck's writing is a lure that leads us--off-center as into a vortex--to the most haunted and haunting territory.--Anne Michaels Her restrained, unvarnished prose is overwhelming.--Nicole Krauss Wonderful, elegant, and exhilarating--ferocious as well as virtuosic.--Deborah Eisenberg

Author Information

Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. New Directions publishes her books The Old Child & Other Stories, The Book of Words, and Visitation, which NPR called ""a story of the century as seen by the objects we've known and lost along the way."" In 2010 Kurt Beals was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award for Anja Utler's engulf–enkindle, and in 2012 he won the first ever German Book Office Translation Prize. His translation of Regina Ullmann's The Country Road was published by New Directions in 2015.

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