On its publication in German, Against the World was hailed as an immediate classic. "One of the most spectacular debuts of recent decades," said Kulturspiegel, while Der Spiegel went even farther: "Against the World is the book of books." Now English-language readers will get their first chance to see what German readers have already learned: this is a big, ambitious, over-the-top masterpiece.
Set in the East Friesia region of Germany in the mid-1970s, Against the World tells the story of Daniel Kuper, the nominal heir to a drugstore dynasty, and his...

Christa Wolf was arguably the best-known and most influential writer in the former East Germany. Having grown up during the Nazi regime, she and her family were forced to flee their home like many others, nearly starving to death in the process. Her earliest novels were controversial because they contained veiled criticisms of the Communist regime which landed her on government watch lists. Her past continued to permeate her work and her life, as she said, You can only fight sorrow when you look it in the eye.
Augustis Christa Wolf s last piece of fiction, written in a single...

During a 1960 interview, East German writer Christa Wolf was asked a curious question: would she describe in detail what she did on September 27th? Fascinated by considering the significance of a single day over many years, Wolf began keeping a detailed diary of September 27th, a practice which she carried on for more than fifty years until her death in 2011. The first volume of these notes covered 1960 through 2000 was published to great acclaim more than a decade ago. Now translator Katy Derbyshire is bringing the September 27th collection up to date with One Day a Year--a collection...

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.

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.