Christa wolf: Nachdenken Über Christa T

Abstract Even before it reached the GDR’s bookshops early in 1969 Nachdenken überChristaT., Christa Wolf’s second major novel, was already the subject of speculation in the German book world. Delays in the book’s production and two lukewarm reviews which appeared in advance of the novel itself led to the suspicion that Christa T. was being suppressed because it was unpalatable to the SED. When it finally appeared, the novel became a cause célèbre, partly because of the undeservedly hostile reception which it received in the East, partly because of the equally undeserved tag of ‘oppositional literature’ which was attached to it in the West, and in no small part because its publisher took the extraordinary step of distancing himself publicly from the book, in the pages of Neues Deutschland