Jenny Erpenbeck (the author of Go, Went, Gone and Visitation) is an epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature. Erpenbeck’s new novel Kairos—an unforgettably compelling masterpiece—tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans....

'In the trenches of Stalingrad' (first published in 1946) was not easy for the reader and appeared in print only thanks to the perseverance of Alexander Tvardovsky, but it was from her that the glory of one of the best trends in Russian literature about the Great Patriotic War - 'lieutenant prose' began. Simple and humane, largely autobiographical, full of precise details and expressive...