A story of the twentieth century traced through the various possible lives of one woman. Moving through pre-war Vienna and Stalin's Moscow to present-day Berlin, Jenny Erpenbeck homes in on the moments when life follows a particular branch and 'fate' suddenly emerges from the sly interplay between history, character and pure chance.
A story of the twentieth century told through the various lives of one woman. By tracing the five possible lives and the five deaths of one woman whose life spans, or fails to span, the twentieth century, the magical, magisterial author of VISITATION exposes the machinations of what we call 'fate' - actually inexplicable and undetermined, an interplay of culture and history, of family and personal entanglements.
