Kairos - Jenny Erpenbeck (Y)

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024 'An ambitious story of love and betrayal' - Irish Times 'The ending is like a bomb thrown into your room -- you'll be reeling for days and weeks to come.' - Neel Mukherjee Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction fuelled by a shared passion for music and art and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them opening up a space for cruelty punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss. From a prize-winning German writer this is the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history.