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)
August / August
Story
»Christa Wolf’s latest book is indefinetly beautiful – at the same time poignant and luminous.« Annie Ernaux
Christa Wolf’s last story, written in the summer of 2011
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 story, written six months before her death, centres on one of the characters from Patterns of Childhood.
It is 1945 and eight-year-old August has lost his mother fleeing from East Prussia. He is taken to a remote sanatorium in an old castle. August’s time there would be...
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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 story, written six months before her death, centres on one of the characters from Patterns of Childhood.
It is 1945 and eight-year-old August has lost his mother fleeing from East Prussia. He is taken to a remote sanatorium in an old castle. August’s time there would be dreary and desolate if it weren’t for Lilo. Lilo is seventeen. She is pretty and not afraid to lock horns with the head nurse. And when Lilo says August’s name it sounds different. Now, over sixty years later, August is thinking back to this first love. He has led a full life and has experienced what might even be called happiness.
»Christa Wolf’s posthumous novella is an act of reconciliation with her own life.« Florian Kessler, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»The story is only about thirty pages long, but it is one of the most beautiful that Christa Wolf ever wrote. So tender and almost debonair, cool, concise, and warm-hearted all at once.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»Christa Wolf lets her sentences speak for themselves: an atmosphere of trust, accompanied by songs and stories, gripping in places, overshadowed by loss […] There is a great deal of humanity and love in this story. A mature writer looking back in gratitude.« Cornelia Geißler, Frankfurter Rundschau
»Today’s reader will of course also find the happiness described here so strange that it is impossible to express that very strangeness in words at all. It simply strikes him, but in a haunting way that he will not be in a hurry to forget the experience of reading this slim volume.« Jana Hensel, Der Freitag
»This, her last story is a fully realised one. Truly: a musical postlude in prose.« Christian Eger, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung
»A serene, quiet text of great narrative force, made significant by the tone, which Christa Wolf has found for it. A curious silence falls when one begins to listen to the narrative voice.« Michael Opitz, Deutschlandradio Kultur
»Christa Wolf’s posthumous novella is an act of reconciliation with her own life.« Florian Kessler, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»The story is only about thirty pages long, but it is one of the most beautiful that Christa Wolf ever wrote. So tender and almost debonair, cool, concise, and warm-hearted all at once.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»Christa Wolf lets her sentences speak for themselves: an atmosphere of...
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2012, 38 pages
Persons
Christa Wolf
Author
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
Author
Christa Wolf, born in Landsberg/Warthe (Gorzów Wielkopolski) in 1929, passed away in Berlin in 2011. Her work has been honoured with...
© Susanne Schleyer
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2019
Sarah Kirsch, Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2019
»We truly got used to all sorts of things«
»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...
Rights sold to:
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Random House Audio)
Year of Publication: 2016
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2016
It’s Quite Comfortable Being Caught in the Middle
»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...
Year of Publication: 2014
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2014
Moscow Diaries
»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)
Year of Publication: 2014
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2014
Obituary for the Living
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)
Year of Publication: 2013
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2013
One Day a Year in the New Century
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)
Year of Publication: 2012
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2012
Speak, that I May See You
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)
Year of Publication: 2010
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2010
City of Angels or The Overcoat of Dr. Freud
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)
Year of Publication: 2005
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2005
Another View
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)
Year of Publication: 2003
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2003
One Day a Year
»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)
Year of Publication: 1979
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 1979
No Place on Earth
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)
Year of Publication: 1976
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 1976
Patterns of Childhood
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...
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)
Year of Publication: 1963
Christa WolfYear of Publication: 1963
They Divided the Sky
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
On the Death of Gerhard Wolf
Author and publisher Gerhard Wolf died on February 7, 2023, aged 94.News