This book whilst the translation from German into English is admirable left me with a bitter taste. A bestseller in Germany, Visitation has established Jenny Erpenbeck as one of Europe’s most significant contemporary authors.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 20, 2014. The continual repetition irritated me and reduced my enjoyment of the story. I tried so hard to continue with it, but chucked it across the room eventually, which I never do out of respect for the printed word. The set-up is strikingly similar to Simon Mawer's Booker-shortlisted The Glass Room, published only last year, although Erpenbeck's novel appeared in Germany in 2008. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission.

Like the storied estates of Brideshead and Manderley, the house in Jenny Erpenbeck’s unsettling, inventive novel Visitation has a hold on everyone who passes through it. We want them all to hold on to their home. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. How often do our memories of our home pester us enough to force us to think for a second about who might be living in the abode we had been forced to leave? It flips back and forth in time, leaves so much unsaid, but so much repeated. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2019. Its richly populated, realistic narrative poses a big challenge for an author previously hailed as a miniaturist, and Erpenbeck is tempted by different methods of tackling it. Built by a young architect at the turn of the century, it sees two world wars and several different regimes. I liked Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone more, but this novel is utterly worth reading.

Very visual and in depth. If you like novels that go beyond 'beginning-middle-end' structure and can relax with enigma, this is one for you. German Jews, some of whom had emigrated to South Africa when the going was good, have left memories of their lives, along with an architect who lived in the house during the Nazi years with his second wife. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

The author showcases her poetic style (I read it in translation so I can't comment on the original) and it quickly becomes tiresome, pretentious almost. A bestseller in Germany, Visitation has established Jenny Erpenbeck as one of Europe’s most significant contemporary authors. It provided an aspect of home ownership one never considers especially in times of war wherein re-location may have been the only option. It began well, with a lyrical piece about the original owners, a strange "gardener" figure and some descriptions of wedding and funeral customs/ But the story really never began. Brechtian characters interact with a lakeside landscape over many generations. Visitation is such a book. Next came The Book Of Words, surreal and dreamlike but no less potent. We are shown no dramatic meetings, no fraught conversations, between the architect and the Jews he supplants; we only see him taking a swim and wiping himself dry with one of the towels that are still hanging in the bathing-house "before it could occur to his wife to wash them".

I had experience of this staying in Bed and breakfast in the 70ish. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products.

There was a problem loading your book clubs. In Visitation, allegory is toned down, history intrudes more explicitly, and the narrative canvas is bigger. The one person known to all the owners and occupants – and thus the thread that binds the narrative together – is the gardener. For example, we watch an orchard being planted, bearing fruit, growing to maturity, succumbing to insect infestation, and finally cut down. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books. Indie UK publisher Portobello has issued all three novels by Jenny Erpenbeck, a multi-prizewinning German who is one of the finest, most exciting authors alive. Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2010. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. I'm sure I would never have chosen to read it -- how many books on Germany do I really need to read? ‘Sibirien’, one of the eleven stories in Tand, was awarded the 2001 Jury Prize at the Festival of German-language Literature in Klagenfurt. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2020. All this over the course of a terrible century in a tragic land. Something went wrong. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Please try again. Michel Faber's The Fire Gospel is published by Canongate. One of these items ships sooner than the other. Or will the Anglo incumbents claim all the lebensraum? It is very rare that a book combines a mastery of language and cadence with an assured and innovative vision to redefine the literary landscape. A book I felt really sorry to have finished and will have to return to it again and, probably, again. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. No word is ever heard from him, and Erpenbeck allows no access to his mind, but we end up feeling great relief whenever he reappears, and deep sadness as this increasingly frail figure does what he can to forestall his Eden's incremental slide into ruin.