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»We truly got used to all sorts of things«

The Correspondence
Edited by Sabine Wolf with assistance from Heiner Wolf
Suhrkamp | Insel
Rights sold to:

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Random House Audio)


»We truly got used to all sorts of things« / »Wir haben uns wirklich an allerhand gewöhnt«
The Correspondence
Edited by Sabine Wolf with assistance from Heiner Wolf
From the estate: The brilliant correspondence of two great authors

»Dearest, dearest Christa, how nice that you remain here on this daft planet!«, Sarah Kirsch writes in the autumn of 1988 to her friend who has just recovered from a life-threatening illness. One decade earlier, following a meeting in West Berlin just after Kirsch had left the GDR, Christa Wolf stated: »I am glad that I was with you and can now think of you calmly.«


The exchange of two authors of international stature over the course of almost three decades, from 1962 to 1990:...

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»Dearest, dearest Christa, how nice that you remain here on this daft planet!«, Sarah Kirsch writes in the autumn of 1988 to her friend who has just recovered from a life-threatening illness. One decade earlier, following a meeting in West Berlin just after Kirsch had left the GDR, Christa Wolf stated: »I am glad that I was with you and can now think of you calmly.«


The exchange of two authors of international stature over the course of almost three decades, from 1962 to 1990: about writing, about the literary scene in both East and West Germany, about the men, the children, working in the garden and the political systems in which they live. It’s probably the latter that brings the friendship to a close after many years of faithful companionship.

Strict and playful, cheerful and desperate, flippant and honest – looking over the shoulders of Sarah Kirsch and Christa Wolf as they write is truly a gift.

»I wish you all the best and a slight sardonic smile from now on and forever.« (Sarah Kirsch, 12.03.1990)

»Now we’re soon going to live in the same country again, isn’t that strange? I could easily leave now, but where to?« (Christa Wolf, 07.04.1990)

»A moving document of German poetry and German division.« Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Never before did we get this close to Christa Wolf’s poetics and aesthetics.« Helmut Böttiger, SZ Literary Supplement

»This commendably edited and commented correspondence between two great female writers showcases a memorable dynamics: The political, which dominates so greatly towards the beginning and that takes a back seat at times behind the familial, intimate, descriptive, eventually becomes the predetermined breaking point.« Richard Kämmerlings, Die Literarische Welt

»A literary event of the most extraordinary sadness.« Anja Maier, taz. die tageszeitung

»This correspondence is an impressive testament and seems to be pointing to something more general. Both are right in their own way, but their intense, moving friendship had to break.« Helmut Böttiger, Deutschlandfunk Kultur

» [...] Thus, in December 1990, ends the correspondence, which has been annotated exceptionally well and that not only talks about a growing and then failing friendship, but also about the history of literature in the GDR.« Ulrich Rüdenauer, MDR

»But the correspondence spanning the years between 1962 and 1992, now available in a meticulously edited and expertly commented edition, is more than the complex record of a personal exchange over the course of three decades. The letters are contemporary documents seen from a distance.« Carola Wiemers, Deutschlandfunk

»[The] unusual and prominent perspective that this correspondence offers should reignite one’s delight in examining East-West German history.« Roland Gutsch, Nordkurier

»The acute strength of these letters is not least founded in the fact that the tragedy of the German division is focused as though through a lens here.« Volker Strebel, literaturkritik.de
 

»A moving document of German poetry and German division.« Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Never before did we get this close to Christa Wolf’s poetics and aesthetics.« Helmut Böttiger, SZ Literary Supplement

»This commendably edited and commented correspondence between two great female writers showcases a memorable dynamics: The political, which dominates so greatly towards the beginning and that takes a back seat at times behind the...

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2019, 456 pages
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Persons

Sarah Kirsch, born in Limlingerode/Thuringia in 1935, lived in East Berlin up until her departure for West Germany in 1977. From 1983 until her death in 2013 she lived in Tielenhemme/Schleswig-Holstein where she worked as a freelance writer and painter. For her poetic works she has received numerous prizes, including the Georg-Büchner-Prize, the Jean-Paul-Prize and the Johann-Heinrich-Voß-Prize.

Sarah Kirsch, born in Limlingerode/Thuringia in 1935, lived in East Berlin up until her departure for West Germany in 1977. From 1983 until her...

Christa Wolf, born in Landsberg/Warthe (Gorzów Wielkopolski) in 1929, passed away in Berlin in 2011. Her work has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Georg Büchner Prize, the Thomas Mann  Prize and the Uwe Johnson Prize.

Christa Wolf, born in Landsberg/Warthe (Gorzów Wielkopolski) in 1929, passed away in Berlin in 2011. Her work has been honoured with...


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

It’s Quite Comfortable Being Caught in the Middle
Year of Publication: 2016
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2016

»Mail, mail, mail«. This cri de cœur, jotted down in the calendar underneath the date of Sunday, 4th of March 1990, is not unfounded: Christa Wolf was a tremendously productive correspondent. Her letters to relatives and friends, colleagues, editors, politicians and journalists provide a fascinating insight into her thoughts, her writing process and her social engagement. Whether she...

Moscow Diaries
Year of Publication: 2014
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2014

»Moscow! I had asked myself beforehand what the first thing to make an impression upon me might be.« So begin Christa Wolf’s writings about a city which she visited for the first time in 1957. In...

Rights sold to:

Russia (Text)

Obituary for the Living
Year of Publication: 2014
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2014

Charlotte, mother to the fifteen-year-old first person narrator of the novel, is the beloved center of the family, all commanding and outright. And yet, Charlotte has kept the obvious quiet: that...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Italy (Edizioni e/o)

One Day a Year in the New Century
Year of Publication: 2013
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2013

After the overwhelming success of City of Angels now follows the eagerly awaited posthumous publication of the second half of Christa Wolf's diary project One Day a...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), France (Seuil), Japan (Dogakusha)

August
Year of Publication: 2012
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2012

In 1976, Christa Wolf published Patterns of Childhood, her major autobiographical book. It has since been translated into twenty languages. Thirty-five years later, her last...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Las migas también son pan), Brazilian Portuguese rights digital (Jaguatrica), France (Christian Bourgois), Italy (e/o), Catalan (Lleonard Muntaner), Estonia (Loomingu Raamatukogu), Serbia (Radni Sto), Slovenia (Modrijan)

Speak, that I May See You
Year of Publication: 2012
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2012

Speak, that I May See You – this Socratic imperative gives a sense of the goal Christa Wolf was striving for with her writing: to make her presence known, »to get to the roots...

Rights sold to:

Italy (e/o)

City of Angels or The Overcoat of Dr. Freud
Year of Publication: 2010
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2010

It amounts to a veritable literary event: Christa Wolf’s completion of the major new novel on which she worked for more than ten years. City of Angels or The Overcoat of Dr....

Rights sold to:

English world rights (FSG), Spanish world rights (Alianza), Russia (AST), Arabic world rights (Al Kamel), France (Seuil), Italy (e/o), Netherlands (van Gennep), Sweden (Norstedts), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Korea (Marco Polo Press), Hungary (Kalligram), Bulgaria (Lettera), Romania (Univers), Lithuania (Mintis), Serbia (Albatros), Turkey (IS Kültür), Greece (Kastaniotis), Macedonia (Blesok), Albania (Santori), Azerbaijan (Alatoran), Israel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (People’s Literature Publishing House), Denmark (Vandkunsten)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Book Club (Der Club Bertelsmann)

 

Another View
Year of Publication: 2005
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2005

Shortly after the collapse of Communism, Christa Wolf spent some time at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Far away in the West, in a foreign world, she looks back at her life in the east...

Rights sold to:

Greece (Kastaniotis)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spain (Circula De Lectores), Italy (Edizioni E/O)

One Day a Year
Year of Publication: 2003
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2003

»In 1960, following an invitation from a Moscow newspaper asking her to describe one day, the twenty-seventh of September, ›as precisely as possible‹, Christa Wolf...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Europa Editions), Russia (Kabinetny Utcheny), France (Fayard)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), Italy (Edizioni e/o), Denmark (Aschehoug), Japan (Dogakusha)

No Place on Earth
Year of Publication: 1979
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 1979
In 1804, Karoline von Günderrode and Heinrich von Kleist met at a tea party in Winkel am Rhein – or at least that’s where they could have met. Christa Wolf lets the two outsiders...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (FSG), Spain (Las Migas de Pan), Arabic world rights (Al Karma), France (Stock), Italy (e/o), Sweden (Lind & Co.), Turkey (Is Kültür)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Catalan rights (Ediciones la Deriva), Netherlands (Van Gennep), Denmark (Vandkunsten), Japan (Kobunsha), Poland (Wydawnictwo Poznańskie), Czech Republic (Mladá Fronta), Bulgaria (Narodna Kultura), Romania (Univers)

Patterns of Childhood
Year of Publication: 1976
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 1976
This novel is a testament of what seemed at the time a fairly ordinary childhood, in the bosom of a normal Nazi family in Landsberg.


Returning to her native town in East Germany forty years...
Rights sold to:

USA (FSG), UK (Virago), Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), Chinese simplex rights (Chunfeng Literature), Russia (Prawda), Arabic world rights (Kanaan), France (Stock), Italy (e/o), Netherlands (Van Gennep), Sweden (Norstedts), Japan (Kobunsha), Poland (Czytelnik), Czech Republic (Odeon), Slovakia (Smena), Hungary (Magvetö), Romania (Univers), Estonia (Eesti Raamat), Serbia (Svetlost), Greece (University Studio Press)

They Divided the Sky
Year of Publication: 1963
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 1963
An absolute classic of East German literature. First published in 1963, the novel follows Rita and Manfred, who fall in love while working in a socialist “work brigade”. After becoming...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Ottawa University Press), Chinese complex rights (Chi Ming), Korea (Minumsa), Bengali (Jadavpur University Press)

Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (People’s Publishing House), France (Éditions Stock), Netherlands (Uitgeverij Van Gennep), Slovenia (Druzba Piano), Greece (University Studio Press)

DISCOVER

News
Author and publisher Gerhard Wolf died on February 7, 2023, aged 94.
News
01.12.2021
On December 1, 2011, Christa Wolf died in Berlin at the age of 82.