I’ve learned, as the years have passed, a hard truth — that the older I get, the less time I have to read. With another year passing, my thoughts have once again found this very idea to be true.

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German to English by Susan Bernofsky, is a wonderful look at how fate shapes a person’s life. The novel is split into five “books,” with intermezzos that question how things could have been different in…