Christa Wolf Author

Christa Wolf (1921-2011) was one of the most celebrated German writers of the postwar era. A central figure in East German literature and politics, she was arguably the foremost German-German writer, awarded major literature prizes in East, West, and reunified Germany. Her wide-ranging work - nonfiction, fiction, and hybrids of the two - is marked throughout by rigorous self-examination, political engagement, and committed feminism. Her most important reexaminations of the cultural past and personal memory include Cassandra, a crucial text for Western feminists and a secret social critique for her readers in the East; Patterns of Childhood, a groundbreaking reflection on growing up in Nazi Germany; and City of Angels, a sequel of sorts to Patterns of Childhood that takes place after the fall of the Berlin Wall.