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.

"These thirty-three prose inventions of Christopher Middleton constitute the fourth pillar of an extraordinary literary oeuvre, the other three being his poetry, translations, and literary essays. Whatever one chooses to call these often astonishing miniatures, they are certainly Middleton's wildest, most accessible, and most entertaining work, and they count as some of his very finest writing."-- August Kleinzahler, Foreword

These uncategorizable writings by a distinguished poet and translator are lively, erudite, and creative. Like his poetry, Middleton's prose pieces are alive with...