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Book Cover for: Go, Went, Gone, Jenny Erpenbeck

Go, Went, Gone

Jenny Erpenbeck

Paperback
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Reader Score

81%

81% of readers

recommend this book

Critic Reviews

Great

Based on 15 reviews on

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Nominee:International Booker Prize -Novel (2018)
Go, Went, Gone is the masterful new novel by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, "one of the most significant German-language novelists of her generation" (The Millions). The novel tells the tale of Richard, a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a routine existence until one day he spies some African refugees staging a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz. Curiosity turns to compassion and an inner transformation, as he visits their shelter, interviews them, and becomes embroiled in their harrowing fates. Go, Went, Gone is a scathing indictment of Western policy toward the European refugee crisis, but also a touching portrait of a man who finds he has more in common with the Africans than he realizes. Exquisitely translated by Susan Bernofsky, Go, Went, Gone addresses one of the most pivotal issues of our time, facing it head-on in a voice that is both nostalgic and frightening.

Book Details

  • Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
  • Publish Date: Sep 26th, 2017
  • Pages: 320
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.90in - 5.30in - 0.80in - 0.70lb
  • EAN: 9780811225946
  • Categories: • Literary• Psychological• War & Military

About the Author

Bernofsky, Susan: - Susan Bernofsky is the acclaimed translator of Hermann Hesse, Robert Walser, and Jenny Erpenbeck, and the recipient of many awards, including the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize and the Hermann Hesse Translation Prize. She teaches literary translation at Columbia University and lives in New York.
Erpenbeck, Jenny: -

An epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature, Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. She studied theater at the Humboldt University in Berlin and directed operas in the nineties. She is also author of such books as The Old Child & Other Stories, The Book of Words, and The End of Days.

More books by Jenny Erpenbeck

Book Cover for: Kairos, Jenny Erpenbeck
Book Cover for: Visitation, Jenny Erpenbeck
Book Cover for: The End of Days, Jenny Erpenbeck
Book Cover for: Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces, Jenny Erpenbeck
Book Cover for: The Book of Words, Jenny Erpenbeck
Book Cover for: The Old Child: & Other Stories, Susan Bernofsky
Book Cover for: Things That Disappear, Jenny Erpenbeck
Book Cover for: Yo Voy, Tu Vas, El Va, Jenny Erpenbeck

What people are saying

Mentioner image for: The New Yorker
The New Yorker
@NewYorker
3 years

Unparalleled reporting and commentary on politics and culture, plus humor and cartoons, fiction and poetry. Get our Daily newsletter: https://t.co/CW0Z2jHao9

Jenny Erpenbeck’s most recent novel, “Go, Went, Gone” allows readers “to feel both the passing of time and the way events can loop back on themselves, creating dissonance and resonance,” @laurenoyler writes. https://t.co/yjEmzRrahP

twitter.com
Mentioner image for: The Atlantic
The Atlantic
1 year

"Erpenbeck creates a fully fleshed-out character in a story that could not be more immediate in its concerns. In contemporary Berlin, a newly retired professor ... takes an interest in a group of African refugees who have set up an encampment to protest their status"

– Gal Beckerman is a senior books editor at the Atlantic.
theatlantic.com
Mentioner image for: tyler
tyler
@walletcheck
3 years

contributing writer @Truthout / editor-in-chief @proteanmag / personal acct.

my family has gifted me Renata Adler's Speedboat and Jenny Erpenbeck's Go Went Gone, and i am very pleased

twitter.com
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Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

A retired widower and classics professor takes an interest in African migrants staging a hunger strike in Berlin and finds himself tumbling into a world of harrowing stories and men who share a common sense of loss.-- "Boston Globe"
This brilliantly understated novel traces with uncommon delicacy and depth the interior transformation of a retired German classicist named Richard. Erpenbeck possesses an uncanny ability to portray the mundane interactions and routines that compose everyday life, which she elevates into an intimately moving meditation on one of the great issues of our times. Her economical prose lends existential significance to the most commonplace conversations, defined less by what they include than by what they omit.--Andrew Moravcsik "Foreign Affairs"
The plight of asylum seekers as told through a retired university professor...Very moving.--Carol Morely "Guardian"
Beautifully haunting.-- "Interview Magazine" (7/15/2019 12:00:00 AM)
This timely novel brings together a retired classics professor in Berlin and a group of African refugees. The risk of didacticism is high, but the book's rigor and crystalline insights pay off, aesthetically and morally.-- "The New York Times"
A highly sophisticated work.--Kate Web "The Spectator" (1/20/2018 12:00:00 AM)
Calls to mind J.M. Coetzee, whose flat, affectless prose wrests coherence from immense social turmoil. By making the predicament of the refugee banal and quotidian, Erpenbeck helps it become visible.--Sam Sacks "The Wall Street Journal" (9/22/2017 12:00:00 AM)
The best novel to date about the migration refugee crisis, German novelist Jenny Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone (New Directions) felt both urgent and tender, taking on depicting Europe on the brink of its next profound change--as seen through the eyes of a professor from Berlin's former East, a man who knows something of what it means to lose one's place in the world.--Megan O'Grady "Vogue"
Erpenbeck's prose, intense and fluent, is luminously translated by Susan Bernofsky.--James Wood "The New Yorker"
Wonderful, elegant, and exhilarating, ferocious as well as virtuosic.--Deborah Eisenberg "The New York Review of Books"
This new novel by the author of The End of Days and Visitation is full of departures and disappearances. It is both a gripping story about the life of the modern migrant and a meditation on how we all find meaning in life.-- "The Guardian"
Erpenbeck works with a dramatist's impulse to extremes and a composer's ear for the resonant phrase. She can catch a murmur on the air and send it echoing up and down a hundred tormented years. Go, Went, Gone tackles an issue that's made headlines--namely, the plight of African refugees in Europe. It clearly engaged this author like nothing before. A fresh career benchmark.-- "Bookforum"
Erpenbeck is scathing about the absurdities of a nightmarish bureaucracy that appears to deliberately wrongfoot refugees. Deceptively unhurried, yet undeniably urgent, this is Erpenbeck's most significant work to date.-- "Financial Times"
Dreamlike, almost incantatory prose.-- "Vogue"
Acclaimed German novelist Jenny Erpenbeck has gone further than most in examining the ephemeral nature of human life. A heart-rending plea for universal tolerance and respect.--Anthony McGowan "The Big Issue" (10/18/2017 12:00:00 AM)
An extraordinary novel, bearing unflinching testament to history as it unfolds.--Neel Mukherjee "The New Statesmen" (8/15/2017 12:00:00 AM)
A nuanced depiction of people who have largely given up the luxury of hope and have little to do but wait. Erpenbeck bluntly reminds readers what is at stake for Germany and, by extension, the world. A timely, informed, and moving novel of political fury.--Brendan Driscoll "Book List" (8/15/2017 12:00:00 AM)

What people are saying

Mentioner image for: The New Yorker
The New Yorker
@NewYorker
3 years

Unparalleled reporting and commentary on politics and culture, plus humor and cartoons, fiction and poetry. Get our Daily newsletter: https://t.co/CW0Z2jHao9

Jenny Erpenbeck’s most recent novel, “Go, Went, Gone” allows readers “to feel both the passing of time and the way events can loop back on themselves, creating dissonance and resonance,” @laurenoyler writes. https://t.co/yjEmzRrahP

twitter.com
Mentioner image for: The Atlantic
The Atlantic
1 year

"Erpenbeck creates a fully fleshed-out character in a story that could not be more immediate in its concerns. In contemporary Berlin, a newly retired professor ... takes an interest in a group of African refugees who have set up an encampment to protest their status"

– Gal Beckerman is a senior books editor at the Atlantic.
theatlantic.com
See more