Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck – A Doomed Affair
In Greek, kairos means the “right or opportune moment”… not chronological time, but the time when everything could change.
But what happens when we miss that moment? When the right time comes, but we don’t act… or act destructively?
I finished reading Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck last night and I have such conflicting thoughts about this one!
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck is a toxic love affair set in the final years of the German Democratic Republic collapse (East Germany). A communist, Soviet-aligned state that existed from 1949 until 1990.
I think, Kairos, isn’t much about the plot as much as it is about the passing times when major political shifts were happening in East Germany. Times when nothing really happens but a lot changes. It is about the thin line between love and control, passion and possession. The unreliability of memory, especially in authoritarian systems.
Memory is a fragile and unreliable thing. What do we do with our past when it doesn’t make sense anymore? There always is a lingering ache of “what was that all for?” That’s the question I ask for both the protagonists, Katharina and Hans. What was that all for?
My the sake of my sanity, I’ll divide this in 3 sections
- The doomed love affair
- The political backdrop
- The merger of the two
1. The Doomed Love Affair
Two protagonists. Katharina (19), she is a young student. And Hans (54), he is older and married and has a son.
“Will you come to my funeral?”. That’s how the book begins. Interesting. Sure, I will.
Reading Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, at its face value, felt like reading about 300 pages of delusional age gap love affair misery. And I still am unsure why at the beginning of it, I low-key was rooting for them which eventually turned into disgust and me begging for Katharina to run and live her life. Probably the way they felt made me feel like a teenager for a second. But a quick reality check was enough to pull me back out of my delusional world.
Katharina, 19, a young student trying to figure herself out (ofcourse). She falls in love (love?) with this older dude, Hans. It is all rosy and flowery until it all starts to break down. And it doesn’t end all at one. It ends day after day. It kills you everyday until you no longer recognize the line between pain and torcher.
Hans, 54, older, more ideological, hypocrite. He clings to a system that’s falling apart, and loses control, both politically and personally. He is not what he looks like. And the book does blow my mind on this one.
One question I kept pondering on by the end of the novel was why were they even together!? To which I think I now have the answer. Maybe.
The way it is written, the book had an incredible drive out of this uncalled relationship. You are pulled along by Katharina’s experiences, her adrenaline rush, her misery, her wants, desire… but there’s still ambiguity at the center. The relationship between Hans and Katharina decays emotionally long before it ends physically.
It is like a long disintegration that mirrors the collapse of East Germany itself.
2. The Political Backdrop
With whatever little I knew about German political history, I had to Google a lot of references to understand certain scenes in this book. But I think if you know a little about The Berlin Wall, you’ll be relatively fine.
It’s funny how communist parties add ‘republic/democratic’ in their party region names. I think it’s one of history’s most ironic branding choices lol. For instance –
- People’s Republic of China
- Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)
- Or – German Democratic Republic (GDR)
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck is set in East Germany. In the backdrop of the GDR collapse. A really intense time in East Germany’s history.
East Germany was communist. It followed the Soviet model.
West Germany was capitalist and democratic. Like the U.S. or U.K.
In the 1980s, life in the country was feeling stuck.. the economy was struggling, and a lot of young people were frustrated and restless. Then in 1989, everything changed when the Berlin Wall fell. That moment marked the end of the East German regime. By 1990, Germany had officially reunited, and people from the East had to adjust to a completely different way of life under capitalism.
It was exciting but also really confusing and disorienting to read this historic setting amidst this doomed love affair.
3. The merger of the two
I didn’t realise how significantly the political backdrops are weaved in this book till I finished almost 60-70% of the book. I kept reading it like some innocent stupid illicit love story.
The downfall of Katharina and Hans’ relationship parallels the collapse of East Germany. Just like the state they lived in, their love story starts off feeling intense, passionate in the beginning with a hoax meaning, built on power and imbalance, but slowly unravels into something darker and more painful.
What felt like fate starts to look like control.
What seemed romantic turns out to be suffocating.
What began in hopes for a future (how, why?!), ended up in pettiness, abusive, accusation, punishment and failure – the love affair and the state affairs.
It’s a kind of emotional wreckage that mirrors how an entire way of life was falling apart around them.
Should You Read Kairos?
I had a great time reading it Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck. For me, it was more about their illicit affair at first, but eventually shifting focus on German history.
The writing is absolutely exquisite, I don’t think I’ve ever read something that felt this raw, intimate, and tender. But wow, the relationship in this book made me cringe and feel genuinely angry as it went on. I don’t even know why I was lowkey rooting for them at first. Maybe it was the intensity, or the whole “fated moment” vibe, but the whole setup feels so hypocritical and messed up once you really see it for what it is.
Reading Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck felt like being pulled into a whirlpool of images and places. Spinning in relation to one another. Brief glimpses of a cozy, grey, bland places. But only until you realise this is not a doomed loved story but has a historic/political theme.
Read it!
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