Background
Christa Wolf ( born Ihlenfeld) was born on March 18, 1929, in Landsberg on the Warte (Gorzow Wielkopolski), she fled westward with her family in early 1945 to Mecklenburg.
( When The Quest for Christa T. was first published in Ea...)
When The Quest for Christa T. was first published in East Germany ten years ago, there was an immediate storm: bookshops in East Berlin were given instructions to sell it only to well-known customers professionally involved in literary matters; at the annual meeting of East German Writers Conference, Mrs Wolf's new book was condemmed. Yet the novel has nothing eplicity to do with politics.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374515344/?tag=2022091-20
( What Remains collects Christa Wolf's short fiction, fro...)
What Remains collects Christa Wolf's short fiction, from early work in the sixties to the widely debated title story, first published in Germany in 1990. Addressing a wide range of topics, from sexual politics to the nature of memory, these powerful and often very personal stories offer a fascinating introduction to Wolf's work. What Remains and Other Stories . . . is clear and farsighted. The eight heartfelt stories in the book show why she has been respected as a serious author since her 1968 novel, The Quest for Christa T. . . . Wolf uses her own experiences and observations to create universal themes about the controls upon human freedom.Herbert Mitgang, New York Times Christa Wolf has set herself nothing less than the task of exploring what it is to be a conscious human being alive in a moment of history.Mary Gordon, New York Times Book Review The simultaneous publication of these two volumes offers readers here a generous sampling of the short fiction, speeches and essays that Wolf has produced over the last three decades.Mark Harman, Boston Globe
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( In this volume, the distinguished East German writer Ch...)
In this volume, the distinguished East German writer Christa Wolf retells the story of the fall of Troy, but from the point of view of the woman whose visionary powers earned her contempt and scorn. Written as a result of the author's Greek travels and studies, Cassandra speaks to us in a pressing monologue whose inner focal points are patriarchy and war. In the four accompanying pieces, which take the form of travel reports, journal entries, and a letter, Wolf describes the novel's genesis. Incisive and intelligent, the entire volume represents an urgent call to examine the past in order to insure a future.
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( First published in 1963, in East Germany, They Divided ...)
First published in 1963, in East Germany, They Divided the Sky tells the story of a young couple, living in the new, socialist, East Germany, whose relationship is tested to the extreme not only because of the political positions they gradually develop but, very concretely, by the Berlin Wall, which went up on August 13, 1961. The story is set in 1960 and 1961, a moment of high political cold war tension between the East Bloc and the West, a time when many thousands of people were leaving the young German Democratic Republic (the GDR) every day in order to seek better lives in West Germany, or escape the political ideology of the new country that promoted the "farmer and peasant" state over a state run by intellectuals or capitalists. The construction of the Wall put an end to this hemorrhaging of human capital, but separated families, friends, and lovers, for thirty years. The conflicts of the time permeate the relations between characters in the book at every level, and strongly affect the relationships that Rita, the protagonist, has not only with colleagues at work and at the teacher's college she attends, but also with her partner Manfred (an intellectual and academic) and his family. They also lead to an accident/attempted suicide that send her to hospital in a coma, and that provide the backdrop for the flashbacks that make up the narrative. Wolf's first full-length novel, published when she was thirty-five years old, was both a great literary success and a political scandal. Accused of having a 'decadent' attitude with regard to the new socialist Germany and deliberately misrepresenting the workers who are the foundation of this new state, Wolf survived a wave of political and other attacks after its publication. She went on to create a screenplay from the novel and participate in making the film version. More importantly, she went on to become the best-known East German writer of her generation, a writer who established an international reputation and never stopped working toward improving the socialist reality of the GDR.
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(Medea is among the most notorious women in the canon of G...)
Medea is among the most notorious women in the canon of Greek tragedy: a woman scorned who sacrifices her own children to her jealous rage. In her gripping new novel, Christa Wolf expands this myth, revealing a fiercely independent woman ensnared in a brutal political battle. Medea, driven by her conscience to leave her corrupt homeland, arrives in Corinth with her husband, the hero Jason. He is welcomed, but she is branded the outsiderand then she discovers the appalling secret behind the king's claim to power. Unwilling to ignore the horrifying truth about the state, she becomes a threat to the king and his ruthless advisors. Then abandoned by Jason and made a public scapegoat, she is reviled as a witch and a murderess. Long a sharp-eyed political observer, Christa Wolf transforms this ancient tale into a startlingly relevant commentary on our times. Possessed of the enduring truths so treasured in the classics, and yet with a thoroughly contemporary spin, her Medea is a stunningly perceptive and probingly honest work of fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385518579/?tag=2022091-20
essayist novelist short-story writer
Christa Wolf ( born Ihlenfeld) was born on March 18, 1929, in Landsberg on the Warte (Gorzow Wielkopolski), she fled westward with her family in early 1945 to Mecklenburg.
She studied literature at the University of Jena and the University of Leipzig.
In 1949 she joined the Socialist Unity Party in the newly founded German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Her first novel, Der geteilte Himmel (1962; Divided Heaven: A Novel of Germany Today, 1965), depicts the failed love between the idealistic protagonist and a disenchanted chemist who abandons East Germany for the West. By exposing the tensions between socialist ideals and personal realities, the work created an ideological controversy within the GDR that was all the more notable because Wolf had set her story against the backdrop of the just-erected Berlin Wall.
Wolf's second novel, Nachdenken überuber Christa T. (1968; The Quest for Christa T. , 1970), broke new ground in East German writing. Caught in a conflict between the demands of the state and her quest for personal autonomy, the title figure vainly asserts her right to private happiness in the face of social and personal disillusionment.
In her third novel, Kindheitsmuster (1976; A Model Childhood, 1980), Wolf recalls her early life during the Third Reich and traces the subtle ways in which she and those around her succumbed to the everyday influences of National Socialism. Denying the popular notion of a "fresh start" after 1945, she shows how patterns of thought and behavior from the Nazi past persisted into East Germany's socialist present. In two mythically based works, the monological story Kassandra (1983; Cassandra, 1984) and the novel Medea: Stimmen (1996), Wolf champions an exalted feminist activism meant to counter the destructive forces of modern, male-dominated techno-industrial civilization. From the start, Wolf accompanied her fictional work with elucidative essays and lectures. Following the appearance of the story "Was bleibt" (1990; "What Remains, " 1990), a personal account written just prior to German unification, she became entangled in a debate over her possible involvement in the surveillance practices of the GDR. In its intensity the debate underscored Wolf's significance as a creative writer intimately linked with the political history of her times.
( First published in 1963, in East Germany, They Divided ...)
( In this volume, the distinguished East German writer Ch...)
( What Remains collects Christa Wolf's short fiction, fro...)
(Medea is among the most notorious women in the canon of G...)
( When The Quest for Christa T. was first published in Ea...)
In 1951 she married the literary scholar Gerhard Wolf.
