German author Jenny Erpenbeck has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015 with her book The End of Days, a story about five possible alternative lives of a girl born in Austria-Hungary at the start of the 20th century.

In one scenario she dies as a baby and we follow her parents who fall on hard times, in another she grows up under fascism and commits suicide as a teenager, in yet another she lives to see the fall of the Berlin wall. Not exactly cheerful reading by the sounds of it, but an interesting premise for a story, a bit reminiscent of Kate Aitkinson’s Life After Life.  Of the long-listed authors (which you can find at bottom of the attached link), I’ve written about Timur Vermes’ Look Who’s Back, Haruki Murakami’s Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and Karl Ove Knausgaard.

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015

Interview with Jenny Erpenbeck