Based in Berlin, Jenny Erpenbeck writes short stories, plays and novels. Her acclaimed recent novel Visitation is a haunting evocation of buried secrets set during the traumatic period from the rise of Nazism to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its central character is a grand summer house on a lake just outside Berlin, based on a house owned by Erpenbeck’s family.

Erpenbeck’s other books include The Book of Words and The Child & Other Stories. She is also a theatre director and has directed at many opera houses in Germany and Austria. Jenny was joined in conversation by visiting Oxford University Professor of Modern Literature Karen Leeder.