A bestseller in Germany, Visitation has established Jenny Erpenbeck as one of Europe’s most significant contemporary authors.
A forested property on a Brandenburg lake outside Berlin lies at the heart of this darkly sensual, elegiac novel. Encompassing over one hundred years of German history, from the nineteenth century to the Weimar Republic, from World War II to the Socialist German Democratic Republic, and finally reunification and its aftermath, Visitation offers the life stories of twelve individuals who seek to make their home in this one magical little house. The novel breaks into the everyday life of the house and shimmers through it, while relating the passions and fates of its inhabitants. Elegant and poetic, Visitation forms a literary mosaic of the last century, tearing open wounds and offering moments of reconciliation, with its drama and its exquisite evocation of a landscape no political upheaval can truly change.
"Jenny Erpenbeck is the rising star of the German literary scene."
― Cosmopolitan
"Erpenbeck will get under your skin."
― Washington Post Book World
"Bernofsky’s translation vividly captures the rhythm of Erpenbeck’s original and allows us to experience this stunning parable of change and brevity in all its beauty and wonder."
― Jewish Book World
"Erpenbeck’s voice is fresh and independent and very convincing."
― Frederike Knabe, Mostly Fiction
"Visitation adds to her compact scenarios something intangible and enormous, which works on them from outside their modest frames with a force eroding human history and its claims to establish durable meaning."
― The Nation
