Favourable and empty time in Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

This thesis examines Jenny Erpenbeck's Kairos as a novel about time, memory, and historical experience. It shows how the text establishes a dialogue between ancient and modern conceptions of time, and how it incorporates the contrasting categories of Kairos and Chronos into its narratological structure, the construction of characters, and the way of processing the past. The novel is also considered as a novel of memory that models both individual and collective forms of remembrance and embeds them within the context of East German collective memory. Furthermore, the thesis focuses on the differing reception of the novel within and outside the German memory community. These divergent readings are analysed by examining the tensions between the experiences of different GDR generations and the cultural horizons of remembrance.