August

Story

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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), Serbia (Radni Sto), Slovenia (Modrijan)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Estonia (Loomingu Raamatukogu),

Literary

Christa Wolf

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...

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

2012, 38 pages

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Literary

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...

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Year of Publication: 2020

Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2020

Cassandra

Cassandra, daughter of the King of Troy, is endowed with the gift of prophecy but fated never to be believed. After ten years of war, Troy has fallen to the Greeks, and Cassandra is now a...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Daunt Books), Spanish world rights (Spain: Malas Tierras; rest of the Spanish world: Cuenco de Plata), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Estação Liberdade), Sweden (Lind & Co.), Turkey (Kültür), Georgia (Sulakauri), Marathi rights (Walden Publication)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Book Club (Büchergilde Gutenberg)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Russia (AST), Portuguese rights (Cotovia), Netherlands (Van Gennep), Korea (Munhakdongne), Japan (Kawade Shobo), Thai (Mahidol UP), Romania (Univers), North Macedonia (Magor Doo), Albania (Instituti i Dialogut dhe Komunikimit)

Year of Publication: 2020

Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2020

Medea: Voices

Medea lives in Corinth as the wife of the argonaut Jason, having followed him there from her homeland of Colchis. In the Corinthian palace, she becomes ensnared in a web of denunciations, intrigue,...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Doubleday), Spanish world rights (Cuenco de Plata), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Estação Liberdade) Korea (Minumin), Turkey (Kültür), Georgia (Palitra L)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Translation Publishing), Russia (AST), Portuguese rights (Cotovia), Arabic world rights (Al-Kamel), France (Librairie Artheme Fayard), Italy (E/O), Sweden (Norstedts), Finland (Tammi Publishers), Japan (Dogakusha), Czech Republic (Odeon Verlag), Romania (Editura Polirom), Estonia (Eesti Raamat), Lithuania (Vaga), Croatia (Demetra), Bosnia (Svjetlost), North Macedonia (Kongresen Servisen Centar), Albania (Institute of Dialogue and Communication), Hindi (Radha Krishna Prakashan)

Year of Publication: 2019

Christa WolfYear of Publication: 2019

Accident: A Day's News

In the spring of 1986, in the East German countryside, the blossoms on the cherry trees are positively exploding – but the word »explode« has taken on a dark weight since the news began to spread:...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (University of Chicago Press), Korea (Boobooks)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Circulo de lectores), Catalan (Edicions de la Magrans), Portuguese rights (Dom Quixote), France (Stock), Italy (E/O), Netherlands (Van Gennep), Finnland (Naisten Kulttuuriydistys), Japan (Kobunsha), Czech Republic (Odeon), Turkey (AFA Publishers)

»We truly got used to all sorts of things«

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)

It’s Quite Comfortable Being Caught in the Middle

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)

City of Angels or The Overcoat of Dr. Freud

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), Arabic world rights (Al Kamel), France (Seuil), Italy (e/o), Netherlands (van Gennep), Sweden (Norstedts), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Korea (Marco Polo Press), 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), Hungary (Kalligram), Bulgaria (Lettera), Romania (Univers)

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...

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

»We didn't know then, none of us knew, what kind of year lay ahead: a year of the most exacting ordeals that were not easy to survive. A historic year, is what they will say...

Rights sold to:

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

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