Christa Wolf Books

The Author's Dimension finally makes Christa Wolf's critical writing available in English. Readers of her fiction will recognize her elegant and demanding prose and the passion with which she continually examines the individual's, in particular the writer's, relationship to his or her society. But this collection also reveals the way in which Wolf approaches her art. Spanning the past three decades, the essays focus primarily on the role of the writer and literature today. Wolf interviews herself on the development of The Quest for Christa T. In a witty and probing essay on reading, she imagines her life without books and removes each layer of literary influence, from Snow White to All Quiet on the Western Front. There are perceptive essays about other writers, including Thomas Mann, Karoline von Gunderrode, Max Frisch, and Ingeborg Bachmann. Finally, the sections "On War and Peace and Politics" and "The End of the German Democratic Republic" demonstrate the ways in which Wolf's political thinking has evolved and cast light on the political situation in East Germany prior to German reunification. With its impassioned celebration of literature, this collection will interest not just those already familiar with Wolf's work but anyone engaged in the acts of writing and reading today.

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Spanning the past three decades, these essays focus on the roles of the writer and literature today. In the first half of this series of witty, probing essays on reading and writing, Wolf examines the individual's, in particular the writer's, relationship to society. The final sections, "On War and Peace and Politics" and "The End of the German Democratic Republic," demonstrate the ways in which Wolf's political thinking has evolved and cast light on the political situation in East Germany prior to reunification. "An important publication, ably served by the editing of Alexander Stephan; the knowledgeable translation by Jan Van Heurck; and Grace Paley's sisterly introduction, which . . . claims at least the later Christa Wolf for a pacifist feminism."—Peter Demetz, New York Times

Parting from Phantoms is a window into the soul of the most prominent writer of the German Democratic Republic and its most famous export, Christa Wolf. The essays, diary entries, and letters in this book document four agonizing years in Wolf's personal history and paint a vivid portrait of the cultural and political situation in the former German Democratic Republic. This collection stands as an important testimony to the personal and cultural costs of German reunification. "The works in this book constitute an essential document of the history of reunified Germany, and this alone recommends it to scholars and those interested in current European events."— Publishers Weekly "Christa Wolf was arguably the most influential writer of a nation that no longer exists. . . . Parting from Phantoms traces the fever chart of her anguish. . . . In some ways, the rawness of the present volume is its greatest contribution, and its bona fides—testifying to the human cost of deception and self-deception."—Todd Gitlin, Nation "A thrilling display of ideological soul-searching."—Ilan Stavans, Newsday, Favorite Books of 1997

In Eulogy for the Living, Wolf recalls with crystalline precision the everyday details of her life as a middle-class grocer's daughter, and the struggles within the family--struggles common to most families, but exacerbated by the rise of Nazism.

This novel is a testament of what seemed at the time a fairly ordinary childhood, in the bosom of a normal Nazi family in Landsberg.Returning to her native town in East Germany forty years later, accompanied by her inquisitive and sometimes demanding daughter, Christa Wolf attempts to recapture her past and to clarify memories of growing up in Nazi Germany

"August" is Christa Wolf s last piece of fiction, written in a single sitting as an anniversary gift to her husband. In it, she revisits her stay at a tuberculosis hospital in the winter of 1946/47, which makes up the closing scenes of her 1976 novel "Patterns of Childhood." This time, however, the perspective is a very different one: that of August, a young patient who has lost both parents to the war. He adores the older girl Lilo, a rebellious teenager who holds things together on the wards. Sixty years later, August thinks back on his life and the things that she taught him. Written in taut, affectionate prose, "August "offers a new entry into Christa Wolf s work and, incidentally, her first and last male protagonist. Yet, it is more than a literary artefacta perfectly constructed story of a quiet life well lived. For August as for Christa Wolf, the past was never dead."

"The rewards of reading Christa Wolf can be very considerable."- The Times Literary SupplementIn 1960, East German writer Christa Wolf received a phone call from a Moscow newspaper asking if she would describe her experiences on a single day, September 27, "as precisely as possible." She was intrigued by the request and has continued recording her thoughts and feelings on that day ever since. This book collects forty of these intimate essays, written between 1960 and 2000. Wolf, one of the most important authors of the twentieth century, writes about the demands and rewards of being a wife and mother and contemplates national and global events during the course of that one day a year.

Cassandra, daughter of the King of Troy, is endowed with the gift of prophecy but fated never to be believed. After ten years of brutal war, Troy has fallen to the Greek army, and Cassandra is now a prisoner of war, shackled outside the gates of a foreign fortress, Agamemnon's Mycenae. Through memories of her childhood and reflections on the long years of conflict, Cassandra pieces together the legendary fall of her city. A woman living in an age of heroes, Cassandra reveals the untold personal story that has been lost among the triumphs of Achilles and Hector.