Jenny Erpenbeck, “one of the most significant German-language novelists of our generation” (The Millions) will discuss with translator Susan Bernofsky her new novel THE END OF DAYS, in which, across five sections, the same unnamed female protagonist heads variously toward a different death. Winner of the Hans Fallada prize, THE END OF DAYS is a brilliantly composed novel of contingency and fate, “a lure that leads us–off-centre, as into a vortex–into the most haunted and haunting territory” (Anne Michaels). Moderated by Jenny Hendrix, a writer and critic for Slate, Bookforum, and the Paris Review Daily.
Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. She is the author of several works of fiction, including The Book of Words (2007) and Visitation (2010), both translated by Susan Bernofsky and published by New Directions. The End of Days won the prestigious Hans Fallada Prize in 2014. Also an opera director, she currently lives in Berlin.
Susan Bernofsky, co-chair of the PEN Translation Committee, is the translator of six books by the great Swiss-German modernist author Robert Walser as well as novels by Jenny Erpenbeck, Yoko Tawada, Hermann Hesse, Gregor von Rezzori and others. The recipient of the 2006 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize and awards from the PEN Translation Fund, the NEA, the NEH, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Lannan Foundation, she is currently working on a biography of Robert Walser and writing a novel set in her hometown, New Orleans.
