Jenny Erpenbeck

Jenny Erpenbeck (born 12 March 1967 in East Berlin, East Germany) is a German novelist and opera director. She trained as a bookbinder and worked in theatre before studying theatre direction at Humboldt University and music theatre direction at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin.

Her novels, including Heimsuchung (Visitation), Aller Tage Abend (The End of Days), Gehen, ging, gegangen (Go, Went, Gone) and Kairos, address twentieth-century German history and the experience of life under and after the German Democratic Republic. In 2024 she and translator Michael Hofmann won the International Booker Prize for Kairos, the first German-language novel to receive the award.