Kairos

📍 Germany 🇩🇪

Katharina is a nineteen year old girl living in East Berlin. Hans is a fifty plus gentleman, a novelist and working for a local broadcaster, also living in East Berlin. The year is 1986. The Berlin Wall is intact. Katharina and Hans have a romantic meet cute and soon start dating each other. She gets completely besotted with Hans and turns a blind eye to his behaviours and transgressions. Hans is a married man and has a son. He has various extramarital relationships while being married to Ingrid. Katharina is aware of his philandering ways but is too consumed by his charm, his sex appeal, his taste in music, art and books to even subconsciously register it as a concern. When Katharina goes away to Frankfurt an der Oder for a year, for a theatre internship, she develops a close friendship with her colleague Vadim. He has feelings for Katharina and after multiple romantic and sexual advances from his side, one fine day, they end up having sex. Through one of the loose pages of her diary, Hans finds out about this affair and mayhem ensues.

Hans is mortified by Katharina’s behaviour and leaves no stone unturned in punishing her. He emotionally abuses her, threatens to end the relationship and even violates her sexually. He periodically records his disdain and hatred for her as cassettes, both sides, 60 minutes each and expects her to answer him. The verbal abuse meted out through these recordings is excruciating. Katharina continues to soothe his chauvinism and misplaced anger by dutifully listening to these recordings, genuinely begging for his forgiveness, despite the repeated attacks on her character and morality. The relentless oppression makes Katharina question the love if it exists between them, even forcing her to self censor at times, but is never able to end the relationship. She continues to suffer because she feels, she deserves it and Hans continues with his torture routine, because he believes, she deserves it.

At the same time, Germany is in the midst of the Cold War. The tensions between East and West Berlin continue to escalate. The political situation becomes volatile and chaotic leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Soon after the fall, it almost seems like an erasure of East Berlin as the West with its wealth and capitalism takes over, leaving no traces of what was once before, the people and the city. These developments run parallel to Katharina and Hans’ relationship, being metaphorical at times; creating an atmosphere of foreboding and unease.

This isn’t a love story, but a story about control. Hans wanted total control over Katharina’s mind and body under the garb of love, but the moment it faltered, control easily metamorphosed into misogyny and toxic masculinity, also under the garb of love. Katharina is groomed by Hans since the beginning of the relationship and because of her tender age and his towering seniority gets moulded into believing the necessity for her suffering because of her indiscretion, prompting acquiescence. At some point, as a reader, you wonder if Katharina wanted to sabotage herself and her happiness by being in this relationship. She represents millions of women worldwide who suffer through such sexist bullying and exploitation, because they aren’t aware of their worth, and of a life outside of emotional captivity.

Jenny Erpenbeck, a prolific German author and opera director, is the first German writer to win the International Booker Prize for Kairos, which is also the first novel originally written in German to win the award. Kairos has been written with a lot of consideration for German politics, the history and the societal structure of East and West Berlin. The book also makes a poignant case for ‘love bombing’ and ‘breadcrumbing’ in relationships. Erpenbeck takes us on Katharina’s traumatic journey of abuse without sugarcoating it. As a reader, you squirm and feel frustrated for Katharina and I wondered, if she felt ennui in Hans’ narcissism. Music, art and theatre play a significant part of the narrative and the author delves deep into them through conversations between the protagonists. Michael Hofmann, a German poet and translator, who shared the International Booker Prize with Erpenbeck, has done an exacting translation of the original.

Kairos is a multilayered sensory experience. The story and the politics kept me intrigued and exasperated simultaneously. Chopin’s Nocturne and Polonaise seem perfect for part one of the book, while Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Goldberg Variations blend in seamlessly with the second and Mozart’s Symphony is the ideal score for the climax. Read the book with these musical masterpieces in the background! I am definitely doing a reread.

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 👏