Your books are steeped in history and historical events. In The Visitation, the main protagonist is a house, and you deal with the way its inhabitants are influenced by historical events. The main character in The End of Days cannot escape history either. Why is history so important to you and your fiction?

It was not my original idea to write about history when I started to write – but while working on my first stories, which were based on my family history, it became more and more clear to me that no private world exists beyond the so-called ‘big history’. There are so many stories in my family about fleeing, leaving things behind, separation of family members during the war – so there has always been a strong sense of the importance of politics in my family, a sense of what’s behind the small things in a single person’s life. You can see every family as a kind of kaleidoscope of mankind and, especially if you happen to be a writer, it’s like a treasure that nourishes you: gathered around the coffee table you will find all the different perspectives you need to understand things a bit more deeply. And of course all the changes I myself experienced after the fall of the wall were also very important for me to feel – not only to know, but to feel – what it means to be all of a sudden cut off from your origins.

How much research goes into your books? And how do you select which events you will use in your books?

It’s fascinating for me to find out how the life I’m writing about really felt. Not only when or where something took place, but what jokes were told, the smell of a building, the sound of someone’s laughter and so on. If I find a 70-year-old mosquito between the pages of a document, it’s also part of the research. I love to sit in archives, I love to talk to people, I love to read books, fiction and non-fiction – in order to find something I hadn’t been looking for. Research is an adventure and a gift – I consider it my privilege to have a profession that allows me to take the time to find those treasures and to pass them to the reader. Sometimes you might find things that are different from what you expected, but it’s always worth facing them and making something out of them rather than inventing something that fits your ideas better. In the end the choice of which factual material you put in the text depends on the heart of your thoughts. The research must work with the original concept to create the story you want to tell – and the story of course will be affected by the research.

The End of Days follows a family history in Eastern Europe before the First World War through the life of one woman. You are inventive with time and fate and your main character experiences many possible lives and outcomes. At the beginning the mother finds out ‘a day on which a life comes to an end is still far from being the end of days’. You imagine that your main character is saved and does not die as an eight-month-old baby and she grows up to experience various horrors of European 20^th -century history. Despite cheating fate, your character avoids death only for a short while.  Do you wonder whether in this case the early death would have been a preferable fate? And how do you choose this moment of possible change in a character’s life?

It’s not all about tragedy – it’s also about giving a new life to the main character in every chapter of the book and about the importance of different influences in different phases of her life, about decisions she makes herself and about how she manages to get through the hard times when decisions are made for her. It is especially during these hard times that you have to face the question of how to retain your integrity and your senses. Often it’s sorrow that enriches our lives. I think in everybody’s life you can find those big changes, paths chosen as well as avoided or missed – passages for which the death in my book is only a synonym. Sometimes it depends on the place where you live, sometimes it has to do with the relationships you have, your family, your love, your professional development, your engagement in politics. But even in one single day you’re not just one: I’m doing my work, I’m a mother, a woman, a friend, a customer, a passenger on a train… There are so many layers in every single moment.

Mapping out these possible lives and biographies must have been very complicated. How did you choose this structure? Did you decide at the very beginning that you would give your character five possible options?

When I started to think about writing the book I wrote some 10 or 12 beginnings. But then I decided to try the version with the five possible deaths and lives and I of course had to be clear about the basic settings – things like time, place and circumstances. At that point I also had to think about the reasons for every death: like illness, love, politics, accident or just old age. But everything else happening within the chapters I explored only while writing. And the more the book grew the more complex it became – so it was like going back again to add some detail in one of the former lives, so that the connection between them became closer. I like the idea that one could read the book more as a circular than as a straight narrative.

There are many hidden events and secrets in your book.  A violently anti-Semitic attack is never openly admitted in the family. The main character’s son in one of the versions of her life ‘carries around with him a vast dark land: all the stories his mother never told him or that she hid from him; perhaps he even carries with him those stories his mother never knew or heard of’. Do you think that being open about the past helps the healing process?

Keeping secrets might be a way to balance something for a short while, but one always has to be aware that it’s also a way to use power. Keeping a secret makes an object out of someone who should and might be a partner.

The End of Days has no conventional plot and no obvious hero or heroine. Your main character remains nameless throughout most of the book. Why do you often choose to write about nameless characters?

To me there seems to be a certain element of fashion in choosing a character’s name in a work of fiction – I don’t like that.  A name itself doesn’t say very much: it’s a bit like a mask. In many cases it tells much more about the taste of the writer than about the character who is given the name. What I liked about the namelessness of my main character in the book is that she instead gets titles like: daughter, lover, wife, comrade, mother, grandmother and so on. That shows much better than a name that a human being is growing, or in motion, or in change, and this interests me much more than a name.

Do you see yourself as a German writer or even as an East German writer? Does the past division into West and East Germany still mean something in German literature?

Since no one can change his or her past I’ll always stay someone who grew up and has been formed by a foreign country – even when my passport is and has always been a German one. For the next generations it’ll be different. As a writer I see myself as one among many others sitting at their desks somewhere in the world – not just in Europe.

What are your literary influences?

There are of course many German speaking authors among my favourites like Büchner, Kafka, Stifter, E.T.A. Hoffmann – but also a whole bunch of translated authors like Majakowski, Gabriel García Márquez, Edgar Lee Masters, Proust or the ancient Ovid.

Your books have been translated into many languages. Susan Bernofsky is your English translator. How do you work with her and with other translators?

Susan Bernofsky is the translator of all of my books into English – so we have known each other for many, many years now: travelling together, giving workshops and readings, visiting each other every year at least once and, of course, sending many emails back and forth. I have always had the feeling of a deep understanding between us not only in terms of the content of a story but also concerning the rhythm of the language, the sound of the words, the ‘speed’ or ‘slow motion’ in a sentence or passage, the hidden humour, the kind of vocabulary both of us love – and, last but not least, the thinking.

Described as ‘one of the finest, most exciting authors alive’ by Michel Faber, Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. She has worked on opera and musical productions and her fiction has been translated worldwide. She is the author of The Old Child & The Book of Words, The Visitation and The End of Days, for which she and translator Susan Bernofsky received the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

About the editor
Tasja Dorkofikis is editor of PEN Atlas and a freelance editor and publicist. She has previously worked as a publicity director at Random House and Associate Publisher and Commissioning Editor for Portobello Books.

Jenny Erpenbeck announced as the winner of the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize via Booktrust.

Read more about The End of Days and buy it through our book partner Foyles on the World Bookshelf.

The post PEN Atlas Q&A: Jenny Erpenbeck appeared first on English PEN.

Eric Lane – Dedalus

We have begun 2014 with Diego Marani’s first detective novel, God’s Dog, translated by Judith Landry, set in the near future with Italy a theocratic state ruled by the Vatican. Described as ‘energetic and trenchant’ in The Independent.February sees Before and During by Vladimir Sharov, translated by Oliver Ready. This is one of, if not the most, extraordinary novel we have ever published. My view of Stalin will never be the same again.In March there is the first English translation by Alan Yates of  Raimon Casellas’  fin-de-siècle masterpiece Dark Vales. A Catalan classic full of darkness and foreboding.

Jane Lawson, Editorial Director – Doubleday 

The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver by Chan Koonchung (May 2014, translated from the Chinese by Nicky Harman).  Humorous and erotic Chinese road novel about the love life of a hapless drifter whose life is upturned when he falls in love with the statue of a young girl from Beijing- the second novel from the author of The Fat Years.

Susan Curtis-Kojakovic, Director – Istros Books

Hamam Balkania by Vladislav Bajac (Serbia) translated by Randall A Major – An ambitious look into the power structures of the Ottoman Empire, juxtaposed with musings on contemporary concepts of identity and faith. (January 2014)

Mission London by Alek Popov (Bulgaria) translated by Daniela and Charles Edward Gill de Mayol de Lupe  – Combining the themes of corruption, confusion and outright incompetence, Popov masterly brings together multiple plot lines in a sumptuous carnival of frenzy and futile vanity, allowing the illusions and delusions of post-communist society to be reflected in their glorious absurdity! (April 2014)

Death in the Museum of Modern Art by Alma Lazarevska (Bosnia) translated by Celia Hawkesworth – Avoiding the easy traps of politics and blame, Lazarevska reveals a world full of incidents and worries so similar to our own, and yet always under the shadow of the snipers and the grenades of the Bosnian war. (June 2014)

False Apocalypse by Fatos Lubonja (Albania) translated by John Hodgson – 1997, a tragic year in the history of post-communist Albania.  This is one man’s story of how the world’s most isolated country emerged from Stalinist dictatorship and fell victim to a plague of corruption and flawed ‘pyramid’ financial schemes which brought the people to the edge of ruin. (October 2014)

The Great War by Aleksandar Gatalica (Serbia) translated by Will Firth – In the centenary year of the start of WWI, we finally have a Serbian author taking on the themes of a war that was started by a Serb assassin’s bullet. Following the destinies of over seventy characters, on all warring sides, Gatalica depicts the destinies of winners and losers, generals and opera singers, soldiers and spies, in the conflict that marked the beginning of the Twentieth Century. (October 2014)

Rowan Cope, Senior Editor – Little Brown, Abacus and Virago

Here are our four highlights for fiction in translation in 2014 from across our lists – we’ve got some fantastic titles coming up.I’m hugely excited about Patrick Deville’s novel Plague and Cholera (Little, Brown hardback, Feb 2014, translated by J.A. Underwood), which is a rich, fascinating and gripping fictional portrait both of the real historical figure of Dr Alexandre Yersin, a game-changing microbiologist and explorer, and of the turbulent early years of the twentieth century. It was a notable bestseller and shortlisted for every major literary award in France.Spanish debut novelist Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera’s The Awakening of Miss Prim (Abacus, June 2014, translated by Sonia Soto) is a charming, quirky tale of love, literature, philosophy and the pleasure to be found in the little things in life – I hope it will appeal to readers who loved novels such as The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

Malice by Keigo Higashino (Little, Brown, October 2014, translated by Alexander O. Smith): Malice is the most acclaimed novel in Keigo Higashino’s bestselling series featuring police detective Kyochiro Kaga. Kaga is one of the most popular creations of Japan’s bestselling novelist and appears in a dozen novels, several TV series and a handful of major motion picture adaptations.

The Stone Boy by Sophie Loubière (February 2014, translated by Nora Mahoney): The Stone Boy is an award-winning and darkly atmospheric French psychological thriller with an unforgettable elderly heroine – Madame Préau.

Juliet Mabey, Publisher – Oneworld

We have a growing list of fiction in translation, which has been actively expanded over the last year with acquisitions from Korea, China, Israel, and Russia, and have a particularly strong list of translated novels for 2014.

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is one of the highlights of this year’s list. Written by the multi-award winning author Sun-Mi Hwang and translated by Chi-Young Kim, it has been on the Korea bestseller list continuously for more than a decade, selling in excess of two million copies. A modern fable-esque classic with strong philosophical themes, it features a spirited hen’s quest for freedom and self-determination, and has been compared to E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Illustrated by London-based Japanese artist Nomoco, it will launch in April at the London Book Fair where Hwang is Author of the Day as part of this year’s Korean Focus.

The Space Between Us by Iranian bestselling author Zoya Pirzad and translated from the Persian by Amy Motlagh is publishing in February, a follow up to Things We Left Unsaid, which we published in 2012. Dubbed the Anne Tyler of Iran, [Pirzad has written] a poignant, wistful story about belonging and otherness, pride and prejudice, and brilliantly paints the Iranian landscape of complex social conventions and private emotional conflict.

Revolution Street by Amir Cheheltan is translated from the Persian by Paul Sprachman and publishes in March. In this critically acclaimed and searing novel – Cheheltan’s first to be translated into English – power and corruption in post-revolutionary Iran are exposed through the actions of two men who scheme to exploit the chaos and confusion for their own benefit. Both torturers in one of Tehran’s most notorious prisons and in love with the same woman, their machinations take them deep into Tehran’s underworld of criminals and provocateurs, in an unusual tragi-comic tale of rivalry and revenge.

The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron and translated from the Hebrew by Steven Cohen won the prestigious Bernstein Award in Israel, where it hit the bestseller lists on publication. Publishing here in November, and described by one reviewer as “probably the best political novel to be written in Israel”, it documents a warped and psychotic society in Israel’s Wild West – the establishment of a new settlement in the West Bank. A specialist at showing both sides of the equation, Gavron explores his subject with subtle complexity, humor and great insight into the human condition, portraying a multi-layered reality that encourages readers to make their own judgments.

Meike Ziervogel, Publisher – Peirene Press

In 2014 Peirene will publish its Coming-of-Age series, three stories about our individual struggles to reach maturity in an ever-changing world.

The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov, translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfiled: A haunting tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War. ‘Hamid Ismailov has the capacity of Salman Rushdie at his best to show the grotesque realization of history on the ground.’ Literary Review (February 2014)

The Blue Room by Hanne Ortavik, translated from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin: A mother-daughter relationship that will send a chill down your spine. ‘A book for all daughters… A book that will get under your skin.’ Elle (June 2014)

Under the Tripoli Sky by Kamal Ben Hameda, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter.  A fascinating portrait of a pre-Gaddafi Libyan society on the verge of change. ‘Neo-realistic characters that could have stepped straight out of a Vittorio de Sica film.’ Cultures Sud (September 2014)

Laura Barber, Editorial Director – Granta Books & Portobello Books

This year kicks off in sinister style with reissue of six books by the great Sicilian author, Leonardo Sciascia, whose powerful exploration of Sicily’s gritty criminal underworld shows him to be a master storyteller across a variety of literary genres, from novels and short stories to detective fiction and true crime.On a lighter note, the satirist Dimitri Verhulst imagines the consequences of the second coming in Christ’s Entry into Brussels (translated by David Colmer).In April, we have a new dispatch from the inimitable Jacek Hugo-Bader, whose Kolyma Diaries (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) record his vodka-fuelled experience of travelling 2000 kilometres through the former Soviet Gulag to meet the inhabitants of this grim land as they eke out an existence or transform themselves into oligarchs.And in May, we have Nightwork, a darkly comic coming-of-age story set during the Russian occupation from the celebrated Czech writer, Jáchym Topol, translated by Marek Tomin.Later in the year, we have A Short Stop on the Road From Auschwitz, a shattering literary memoir by Göran Rosenburg, the son of Holocaust survivors (translated from Swedish by Sarah Death), and Walter Kempowski’s Swansong ’45 (translated from German by Shaun Whiteside), a monumental collection of first-hand accounts that brings to life the last days of World War II.Finally, in December, Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days (translated from German by Susan Bernofsky) which is a story of the 20th century traced through the various possible lives of one woman and was last year’s winner of the Hans Fallada Prize.

Adam Freudenheim, Publisher and Managing Director – Pushkin Press

As a publisher specializing in fiction from around the world it’s always difficult to choose highlights for the year, so focussing on just two writers whose work appears with us in English for the first time this spring and with apologies to other Pushkin writers I’ve not been able to include, here goes.

Song for an Approaching Storm by Peter Fröberg Idling is an atmospheric thriller set in one tense month in 1950s Cambodia.  The story is told in three sections, each giving the perspective of one character in a love triangle.  The rub comes in that one of the three is Saloth Sar, who twenty years later would become known to the world as Pol Pot. First published in Swedish in 2012, Song for an Approaching Storm is an original and moving debut novel beautifully translated by Peter Graves. (March 2014)

Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda was a sensation on publication in Holland in 2010.  It went to number one on the bestseller list, was nominated for every Dutch literary prize going – and won five of them – and is being translated into eight languages.  Buwalda’s book is a family saga in which things go rather terribly wrong for one Dutch family in the 1990s and 2000s.  Set in Holland, Beligium and California, Bonita Avenue is a terrific, page-turning book that – as one critic put it – feels like a cross between the work of Jonathan Franzen and Stieg Larsson!  Jonathan Reeder has translated this larger-than-life debut novel. (April 2014) 

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