Winner of the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize From one of the most daring voices in European fiction this is a story of the twentieth century traced through the various possible lives of one woman She is a baby who barely suffocates in the cradle Or perhaps not? She lives to become as an adult & dies beloved Or dies betrayed Or perhaps not? Her memory is honoured Or she is forgotten by everyone Moving from a small Galician town at the turn of the century through pre-war Vienna & Stalin's Moscow to present-day Berlin Jenny Erpenbeck homes in on the moments when life follows a particular branch & 'fate' suddenly emerges from the sly interplay between history character & pure chance The End of Days is a novel that pulls apart the threads of destiny & allows us to see the present & the past anew