The Quest for Christa T.

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Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971 - German literature - 185 pages
The story of an East German woman who reached adolescence during World War II, embraced the new world order, had her enthusiasm and idealism gradually corroded by the crass materialists around her, married and had a family, and suddenly died a relatively young woman. Her heroism, that of the ordinary, intelligent and sensitive private person, becomes the story of a whole generation. The quest for Christa T. has no overt political theme, yet it is imbued with the awareness of political implications that only a socialist writer can have.

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About the author (1971)

Christa Wolf was born on March 18, 1929, in Landsberg, which is now Gorzow, Poland. Her father joined the Nazi Party and she became a member of the girls' version of the Hitler Youth. In 1949, she joined the Socialist Unity Party and studied German literature at universities in Jena and Leipzig. She wrote numerous novels during her lifetime including The Divided Heaven, The Quest for Christa T., A Model Childhood, and Cassandra. She won several awards including the Heinrich Mann Prize in 1963 and Thomas Mann Prize for literature in 2010. She died on December 1, 2011 at the age of 82.

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