Jenny Erpenbeck: Freedom Came at a Price

How does it feel to have been born and raised in East Germany and then, at the end of childhood, thrown into a radically new way of living when the Berlin Wall came down? Jenny Erpenbeck knows the answer. Anyone who has had the pleasure of reading her novels such as Visitation and Go, Went, Gone knows that Erpenbeck has a devastating talent for revealing truths through fiction. But Not A Novel: A Memoir in Pieces is something different. Spanning 25 years of her writing life, it is an entertaining, engaging and deeply moving collection of essays, and an account of the extraordinary times she has lived through. Using her new book as a jumping off point, Erpenbeck talks to writer and translator Daniel Hahn about her fascinating experiences of Europe’s turbulent half-century, in this event filmed live at the 2021 Edinburgh International Book Festival.

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Communities Programme participants celebrate success of 2024 Communities Programme participants celebrate success of 2024
Friday 13 December

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