The Enduring Impermanence Of Jenny Erpenbeck

For Jenny Erpenbeck, nothing lasts forever, not home, not the rituals that connect us to previous generations, not even death. Even her writing style celebrates this impermanence.

- Necia Chronister

In Jenny Erpenbeck’s works, things disappear. People disappear. Knowledge disappears. Even rituals and customs, the practices meant to guard against the erosion of culture by binding us to our past, dissolve over time. Erpenbeck’s oeuvre is thematically complex, historically focused, and materially rich, and yet impermanence—the simple idea that things disappear—is what endures across her works. Who better to write about the eventual disappearance of all things, even those that seem most constant to us, than Jenny Erpenbeck? A young adult when Germany united in 1990, she witnessed the swift dismantling of her state and the erasure of much of her culture as the East was incorporated into the West. For Erpenbeck nothing lasts, not home, not country, not even memory.