Go, Went, Gone

Erpenbeck is becoming one of Europe's most highly regarded writers, perpetually striving to create an artistic prism through which to interpret history's arc... Superbly translated by her usual collaborator Susan Bernofsky [...] there is a melancholic undertone to the novel, murmuring beneath its condensed, liquid prose. Deceptively unhurried, yet undeniably urgent, this is Erpenbeck's most significant work to date -- Catherine Taylor * Financial Times * Europe's outstanding literary seer, Jenny Erpenbeck's new novel resonates with an unexpected simplicity that is profound, unsettling and subtle. Astutely translated by Susan Bernofsky [...] Erpenbeck's powerful tale, delivered in a wonderfully plain, candid tone, is both real and true. It will alert readers, make us more aware and, it is to be hoped, more human -- Eileen Battersby * Guardian * A remarkable novel which questions our understanding of borders and identity and which calls above all for compassion -- Annie Rutherford * Skinny * Susan Bernofsky's finely crafted translation [...] reaches Anglophone readers at an opportune moment... Erpenbeck binds the upheavals of past and present, Europe and Africa. Lyrical and satirical by turns, she shows that fearful isolation, emotional or political, hurts wall-builders and wall-jumpers alike * Economist * Vital... [Erpenbeck] is asking a compelling and timely question -- Sally Rooney * Irish Times * Acclaimed novelist Jenny Erpenbeck has gone further than most in examining the ephemeral nature of human life... An immensely ambitious novel, tackling a wide, complex range of themes, it is about the arbitrariness of borders, both literal and metaphorical, and the notion of foreignness as opposed to belonging. It is about the complex nature of comprehension and compassion, and the places genuine empathy between foreign bodies might be achieved... It is also a clarion call, a righteous protest against dehumanising government systems [...] Ultimately Erpenbeck - wise, caring and profound - triumphs in this heart-rending plea for universal tolerance and respect -- Jane Graham * Big Issue * [In] this wise, moving novel [...] Erpenbeck demands that her fellow countrymen show compassion to those whose lives have been "cut off, as if with a knife"' -- Paul Connolly * Metro * At once urgent and contemporary [...] the brilliant German novelist, Jenny Erpenbeck, has taken on the churn of the great issues of refugees, illegal immigration and asylum in her latest novel, Go, Went, Gone and created something profound, beautiful and deeply affecting... It is a mark of Erpenbeck's compassion and her complex, nuanced understanding of the human motivations of sympathy that she can make [a] (white, liberal) weakness of Richard a tender, even humorous seam in her book... [An] extraordinary novel, bearing unflinching testament to history as it unfolds -- Neel Mukherjee * New Statesman * Jenny Erpenbeck shows us that we are involved already, whether we want to be or not -- Maren Meinhardt * TLS * Not only timely but masterful -- Michael Pollan * Guardian * Very moving -- Carol Morley * Observer * Lyrical, absorbing -- Julia Alvarez * International New York Times *

Jenny Erpenbeck is the author of The Old Child & The Book of Words (2008), Visitation (2010) and The End of Days (2014, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize), and Go, Went, Gone (2017), all published by Portobello. Her fiction is published in twenty-six languages. Susan Bernofsky has translated works by Robert Walser, Hermann Hesse, Gregor von Rezzori, Yoko Tawada, Ludwig Harig and Franz Kafka. She is the author of Foreign Words: Translator-Authors in the Age of Goethe and is currently at work on a biography of Robert Walser. Her translation of The Old Child and Other Stories was awarded the 2006 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize.