Kairos

by Jenny Erpenbeck

And if it wasn’t that way, one thing after another, if there weren’t waves that washed one person ashore and someone else out to sea? If everything was equally present at every moment of life? One’s own, anyone’s. It’s only from the individual destinies that you could tell whether the atoms of history bore the aspect of a beginning or an ending.

She sees herself for the first time taking off the rings Hans has given her, and how it makes her feel so light, so scarily light that she threatens to float up and away into the air.

Allusion to The Unbearable Lightness of Being echoes through this book, although here it is undeniable.