A novel showing sliding doors in all their cruelty. 

Set in East Berlin in the 1980s, Kairos follows an intense relationship between a young woman and an older man as the GDR begins to fracture. Their affair unfolds alongside the slow collapse of the state. It shows intimacy and ideology moving in parallel.

Erpenbeck writes with restraint. Power in small gestures. Desire entangled with control. Letters, silence, repetition. The private sphere becomes a mirror of political authority without the book ever announcing the comparison. The title — kairos, the opportune or decisive moment — hangs over the story.

For readers interested in European literary fiction, Cold War Germany, political intimacy, and formally controlled prose.