Books from Around the World: ‘The End of Days’ by Jenny Erpenbeck

“If the world were ruled by chance not a God.”

Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days has been rightly showered with praise and accolades. Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015, this impressionistic, stream-of-conscience story about lost lives, broken lives and the endless cycle of personalities, archetypes and time is as much a scholarly work of metaphysics as it is a fictional tale. There’s little anchoring the book to any conventional chronological timeline, but the novel’s core ultimately revolves around the tragic opening scene in which an infant dies and a grief- stricken mother’s entire existence is rent apart. From there, reality fragments as we’re offered glimpses into several alternate timelines where characters are spared longer and longer, only to realise that behind each curtain lies only more suffering. Across all five possible timelines, the same haunting cries and ever-repeated phrases chase the plagued family. Erpenbeck paints a world bleak and hostile to women, where survival only leads to a bitter path of existence, and down every avenue, the female characters are controlled and forced to adapt around others. “I am not a whore” is the mantra chanted by the women across all the timelines, both whispered and yelled in a dozen different dark vignettes. Erpenbeck’s novel is at times difficult to grasp, with scenes as ephemeral and vague as a rainbow caught in an oil slick, but it is always intensely beautiful. As sharp and multi-faceted as a smashed mirror, this is a novel about the evil of chance, endless possibilities, and the inescapable social constraints that exist in our flawed and unequal world. Beautifully written and carefully translated from German to read completely naturally, this book is for people who aren’t afraid of a novel that will challenge them.

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