The End of Days

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Susan Bernofsky (Translator)

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Book cover for The End of Days

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Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Hans Fallada Prize, The End of Days, by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, consists essentially of five “books,” each leading to a different death of the same unnamed female protagonist. How could it all have gone differently?—the narrator asks in the intermezzos. The first chapter begins with the death of a baby in the early twentieth-century Hapsburg Empire. In the next chapter, the same girl grows up in Vienna after World War I, but a pact she makes with a young man leads to a second death. In the next scenario, she survives adolescence and moves to Russia with her husband. Both are dedicated Communists, yet our heroine ends up in a labor camp. But her fate does not end there….

A novel of incredible breadth and amazing concision, The End of Days offers a unique overview of the twentieth century.

  • ISBN10 0811225135
  • ISBN13 9780811225137
  • Publish Date 8 March 2016 (first published 6 November 2014)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
  • Format Paperback
  • Pages 320
  • Language English