Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. While working as an opera director, she debuted with her short novel The Old Child & Other Stories (2005), which was followed by other literary publications, including novels, short stories, and stage plays.
Her novel The End of Days (2016) was enthusiastically received by both the public and press alike and has been awarded several prizes, including the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (along with her translator, Susan Bernofsky) in 2015. For her 2015 novel, Go, Went, Gone, she won, among other awards, the Thomas Mann Prize and the Premio Strega Europeo. In 2017 Erpenbeck was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Her most recent novel is Kairos (2021; English translation 2023).
