On the shores of a Bran­den­burg lake stands a house that weath­ers not only the tumul­tuous changes in sea­sons but also the tem­pes­tu­ous changes of occu­pants over the course of much of the 20th cen­tu­ry. In her riv­et­ing new nov­el, bril­liant­ly trans­lat­ed by Susan Bernof­sky, Erpen­beck (The Book of Words) con­ducts us on a jour­ney through the changes in t he life of the house by weav­ing togeth­er the lives of its twelve dif­fer­ent inhab­i­tants, who range from the orig­i­nal occu­pants, a farmer and his four daugh­ters, to a name­less girl being hid­den from the Nazis, a Red Army Offi­cer, and a rel­a­tive of the orig­i­nal occu­pants. She inter­spers­es each tale with the ongo­ing sto­ry of the house’s gar­den­er, who is the one con­stant occu­pant of the prop­er­ty. When he leaves, nev­er to be seen again, the last occu­pant comes to the house to close it up and pre­pare it for demo­li­tion. In the end, much like the lives of those who have lived in it, the house is torn down, piece by piece, and the land returns, ever so briefly, to the primeval for­est out of which it grew. Bernofsky’s trans­la­tion vivid­ly cap­tures the rhythm of Erpenbeck’s orig­i­nal and allows us to expe­ri­ence this stun­ning para­ble of change and brevi­ty in all its beau­ty and wonder.