
Kairos
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Narrated by:
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Lisa Flanagan
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By:
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Jenny Erpenbeck
About this listen
Jenny Erpenbeck’s much anticipated new novel Kairos is a complicated love story set amidst swirling, cataclysmic events as the GDR collapses and an old world evaporates.
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 19-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his 50s named Hans. Their passionate yet difficult long-running affair takes place against the background of the declining GDR, through the upheavals wrought by its dissolution in 1989, and then what comes after.
In her unmistakable style and with enormous sweep, Erpenbeck describes the path of two lovers as Katharina grows up and tries to come to terms with a not always ideal romance, even as a whole world with its own ideology disappears.
©2021, 2023 Penguin Verlag, Munchen; Michael Hofmann (P)2023 New Directions Publishing Corp.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Overall
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Guido and Vincent, best friends (and third cousins), aren’t expecting to fall head-over-heels in love, but that is exactly what happens. Guido is smitten with Holly, a dazzling young woman who chafes at the idea of complacency, while Vincent falls for Misty, a work colleague with an acerbic sense of humor who seems as uninterested in romance as she is in Vincent (at first). In the months that follow, both couples will experience the rituals of courtship, jealousy, estrangement, family entanglements, and other perils of the heart as they try to find love in spite of themselves.
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Amazing narrator for a good story
- By The Jones Family on 08-15-24
By: Laurie Colwin
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Evenings and Weekends
- A Novel
- By: Oisín McKenna
- Narrated by: Isabel Adomakoh-Young
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Summer in London stops for no one. Not the half-naked drunks and stoners, the bachelorette parties glugging from bejewelled bottles, the drag queens puffing on hurried cigarettes. It’s June 2019, and everyone has converged on the city’s parks, beer gardens, and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive. Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant, and broke.
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Amazing Narration
- By Kristen on 03-12-25
By: Oisín McKenna
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The End of Days
- By: Jenny Erpenbeck
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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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. The first chapter begins with the death of a baby in the early 20th-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.
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Nothing like the book description
- By Queen's Jester on 07-10-24
By: Jenny Erpenbeck
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Time Shelter
- By: Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel - translator
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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“At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created,” begins Time Shelter’s enigmatic narrator, who goes unnamed. “In the mid-seventeenth century, the Irish bishop Ussher calculated not only the exact year, but also a starting date: October 22, 4,004 years before Christ.” But for our narrator, time as he knows it begins when he meets Gaustine, a “vagrant in time” who has distanced his life from contemporary reality by reading old news, wearing tattered old clothes, and haunting the lost avenues of the twentieth century.
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Great story about memory & forgetting
- By D. on 05-20-23
By: Georgi Gospodinov, and others
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The Safekeep
- By: Yael van der Wouden
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
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Beautiful. Unexpected.
- By cm on 01-15-25
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Not a Novel
- A Memoir in Pieces
- By: Jenny Erpenbeck
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Starting with her childhood days in East Berlin (“I start with my life as a schoolgirl.... My own conscious life begins at the same time as the socialist life of Leipziger Strasse”), Not a Novel provides a glimpse of growing up in the GDR and of what it was like to be 22 when the wall collapsed; it takes us through Erpenbeck’s early adult years, working in a bakery after immersing herself in the worlds of music, theater, and opera, and ultimately discovering her path as a writer.
By: Jenny Erpenbeck
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Held
- A Novel
- By: Anne Michaels
- Narrated by: Anne Michaels
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures
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Would give six stars if possible
- By love it on 08-31-24
By: Anne Michaels
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Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
- Stories
- By: Yiyun Li
- Narrated by: Angela Lin, James Yaegashi, Jackie Chung, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Author Yiyun Li, honored as one of Granta’s 21 Best Young American Novelists under age 35, continues her illustrious career with this insightful collection of short stories. With compelling visions of the scrapes and unpleasant situations in which people find themselves, Li’s works trigger emotional responses of all types - whether through a tale of unrequited love, an unburdening of guilt, or something else entirely.
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Sometimes harsh, but always compelling
- By Dr. J. Adrienne Roth on 10-01-23
By: Yiyun Li
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Eurotrash
- A Novel
- By: Christian Kracht, Daniel Bowles - translator
- Narrated by: Kevin Kemp
- Length: 4 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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From “the great German-language writer of his generation” (Joshua Cohen) comes the second novel of Christian Kracht’s career narrated by an eponymous “Christian”. Eurotrash begins in Zurich, where Christian has returned to care for his 80-year-old mother after her discharge from a psychiatric institution. Confronting the dark shadows of his family’s past—particularly his grandfather’s strong ties with the Nazi regime—and struggling to navigate the emotionally wrenching terrain of his relationship with his mother, he sets off on a road trip with her.
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I loved the interaction between mother and son
- By BBWrighter on 03-05-25
By: Christian Kracht, and others
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Orbital
- By: Samantha Harvey
- Narrated by: Sarah Naudi
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below.
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Dull
- By ELLEZEE on 02-03-24
By: Samantha Harvey
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Kairos
- By: Mary Calmes
- Narrated by: Michael Fell
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Joe Cohen has devoted the past two years of his life to one thing: the care and feeding of Kade Bosa. His partner in their PI business, roommate, and best friend, Kade is everything to Joe, even if their relationship falls short of what Joe desires most. But he won’t push. Kade has suffered a rough road, and Joe’s pretty sure he’s the only thing holding Kade together. Estranged from his own family, Joe knows the value of desperately holding on to someone dear, but he never expected his present and past to collide just as Kade’s is doing the same.
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Not Much Suspense but Still Good
- By Jovan on 07-09-18
By: Mary Calmes
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Boulder
- By: Eva Baltasar
- Narrated by: Aina Clotet
- Length: 2 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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La protagonista de Boulder és una dona atreta per la solitud com per un imant. Es guanya la vida fent de cuinera en un buc - la situació perfecta: una cabina, l'oceà, moltes hores per encarar el buit i algun port on conèixer dones. Fins que una la reté, se l'emporta entre les quatre parets d'una casa i l'embarca en la gestació assistida d'una criatura. ¿Què en farà, la maternitat, de l'amant coneguda en un bar? ¿I què farà ella a la gàbia? Dos anys després de Permagel i d'un viatge a través de mitja dotzena de llengües, l'obra de Baltasar torna a atracar entre nosaltres amb una heroïna com només sap crear-les ella.
By: Eva Baltasar
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Crooked Plow
- A Novel
- By: Itamar Vieira Junior, Johnny Lorenz - translator
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever. Heralded as a new masterpiece, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in Brazil's poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery, is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath, and political struggle.
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So good!
- By Bianca Lansdown on 12-27-24
By: Itamar Vieira Junior, and others
What listeners say about Kairos
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- mojorand
- 07-02-24
Loved "Go, Went, Gone..."
But this one didn't do it. If nothing else, I would have liked to have absorbed more of the German history and art references but the characters and the story are banal and the reading (especially the voicing for Hans) is annoying, therefore I wasn't inspired to pay as much attention as I would have, had I liked the book.
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- Harry
- 01-20-24
The story goes on and on and on.
I did not like the story and it seemed to be one that was monotonous and repetitive to hear. This was a surprise to me since I usually like Erpenbeck’s writing.
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- Carol
- 07-14-24
agonizing diatribe that never ended
I was drawn to this as the winner of a book award and the historical background of Eastern Germany between WW2 and the wall coming down. That part was very interesting but overshadowed by the story of the relationship between the two main characters which became literally hours of listening to Hans berating Katarina for her alleged mistreatment of him...I just wanted to scream at for her to tell him to pound sand-but maybe it was the authors intent for us to really feel this relationship on a visceral level. Anyway not a satisfying read...I suffered through it because I was on a 15 hour drive and needed something to distract me.
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- Eric Anderson
- 09-18-23
A struggle to finish this
As an abused woman, this was cringe worthy to listen. I didn’t get any sense of lessons learned though. The thread between East Germany falling and the relationship failing was just not appealing. Hans was a prick, pure and simple.
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- SuzB
- 06-10-24
Just Didn’t Like It
The plot was not for me. I just didn’t think it had depth and it was very hard to follow.
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- UNC Tar Heel Family
- 08-24-24
Slow , often circular , little plot or relatable characters
This was difficult to finish and I would not recommend it . The characters were in relatable and made me uncomfortable, which maybe was the artistic intent , but I could not find much motivation to read / listen , other than the famous award the author recently received .
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- Risa King
- 08-29-24
Just tedious
Overwritten and boring. Only kept reading because of book group selection. Definitely a good discussion. Nobody in group would recommend to friends or family
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- CB
- 10-13-24
Painful read, but important to read to the end
the central part of this book is painfully repetitive, and both characters feel stuck and not particularly likeable. Not an image of love that I can identify with, on either side.
I almost quit several times, but I knew I needed to hear the end. Indeed, the ending pulls the themes of the book together in a powerful way that links the personal and the political. I reconciled my conflicted feeling about it by shifting about 2/3 of the way through to listen at 140 speed (something I have never done before).
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- skipnina
- 06-03-24
Depressing and hard to follow
Although this book has interesting historical parts it is very hard to follow. I often had to back track to try to figure out who, what, or when things were taking place. The story is very sad the reading is very heavy. I'm sure there are those who will love it but I am not one of them.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-09-24
Torture
I found this book redundant and painful to listen to, hoping for something more …all the way through.
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