Excerpt from Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Why would someone do that?

You never know.

So now it's roofing tiles on top?

No, the roof is made of metal. But it's so lightweight that sometimes during the rainy season when the big storms would start, we would all stand in the living room and use ropes to hold the roof in place. All five of us had to use all our weight. When the storms started, all of us were afraid all the time. Outside, because everything was flying around. And inside, because the roof might fly off and take us with it.


In early February, the letters from the Foreigners Office arrive for all the men from the Oranienplatz group who haven't filed an application for asylum in Germany. Case after case has been individually reviewed and decided. It turns out—as was already clear in the fall of the previous year when the Oranienplatz camp was dismantled—that the legal responsibility for the men who landed in Italy is borne by Italy alone.

Ali from Chad, who's worked as a home health-care aide for Anne's mother, has to go.

Khalil, who doesn't know where his parents are, or even if they're still alive, has to go.

Zani, the one with the bad eye who collected articles about the massacre in his hometown, has to go.

Yussuf from Mali, the dishwasher who wants to become an engineer, has to go.

Hermes, the one with the golden shoes, has to go.

Abdusalam, the singer with the squint, has to go.

Mohamed, who for reasons of fashion lets his pants slip down below his buttocks, has to go.

Yaya, who cut through the wire for the alarm bell to end the fire drill, has to go.

And even Rufu with the new filling in his tooth.

Apollo has to go, Apollo who is at home in the deserts of Niger, in the region where France is prospecting for uranium.

Tristan has to go.

And Karon, the thin man, has to go.

Even tall Ithemba, who cooks so well. When they order him to leave his room, he slits his wrists before the eyes of the police officers and is brought to the psychiatric ward.

And even Rashid has to go. On the Monday when he receives the letter, he pours a can of gasoline over himself on Oranienplatz and tries to light himself on fire.


Where can a person go when he doesn't know where to go?


The church gives seven men a small apartment to share in the north of Berlin, donated by a member of the congregation. The main room is furnished with seven mattresses on the floor, and a tiny bedroom is reserved for backpacks, suitcases, and shopping bags. Since it's a ground-floor apartment, the people from the church advise the men to keep the blinds lowered so no one can see in, because you never know.


The church places fifteen men on a boat that in summer is used for pleasure cruises. In winter, it docks along the bank of the Spree River outside Treptow. A few of the men are given semi-private cabins, while the others sleep in donated bunks set up in a common room in which all of them also cook and eat. To be sure, it's difficult to heat a pleasure boat in winter. Eleven men are permitted to occupy a makeshift shelter run by a foundation in Berlin-Mitte: there's one large room with a cooking area and table in the middle, surrounded by a ring of mattresses at its edges.

Twelve find beds in the community room of a church in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

Sixteen find beds in the community room of a church in Berlin-Adlershof, but only until March at the latest.

Fourteen are taken in by ministers and congregation members in their own homes, and on the internet, the ministers and congregation members are reviled aslowlifes and smugglers.

Twenty-seven are taken in by African friends legally residing in Berlin.

One man is permitted to spend the night on the floor of a Nigerian restaurant in Berlin-Neuko¨lln.

Excerpted from Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck. Copyright © 2017 by Jenny Erpenbeck. Excerpted by permission of New Directions. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.