Christa Wolf: A Companion ed. by Sonja E. Klocke and Jennifer R. Hosek (review)

This volume presents careful readings and rereadings of Christa Wolf's work. It places the continued attention that Wolf's writing receives into new contexts, including its reception in China and Vietnam. Some contributions pay homage to the ways the reception of Wolf's oeuvre has shaped German studies in the United States and fürthered transatlantic conversations between US scholars and scholars in both divided and unified Germany. The editors' thorough and insightful introduction sets the stage for this volume, which serves as a companion for Wolf's readers, regardless of whether they are already familiar with her work and its reception over time or just getting to know it.

In "Modernity and the City in Christa Wolf's Oeuvre of the 1960s," Curtis Swope emphasizes the continued relevance of Wolf's writings in the context of modernity and its position in German culture. Regine Criser also works with categories of space in order to investigate Wolf's role as geographer of Germany across historical periods and geographical divides in her contribution "Narrative Topographies in Christa Wolf's Oeuvre." In her insightful discussion of gender in Wolf's work, Anna K. Kuhn reminds her readers of the differences in the gendered reception of Wolf in East and West Germany. Whereas Deborah Janson traces the increasing importance of the environment and posthumanist thinking in Wolf's Selbstversuch (1972; "Self-Experiment: Appendix to a Report," 1978), Kassandra (1983; Cassandra, 1984) and Störfall: Nachrichten eines Tages (1987; Accident: A Day's News, 1989), Sabine von Mering focuses on Störfall in order to discuss the renewed relevance of the text in today's world. Roswitha Skare draws attention to the illustrations that frame and accompany literary texts such as Sommerstück (1989; Summer piece) and Was bleibt (1979; What Remains, 1993), reminding us of the relationship between visual and literary artists as well as the material conditions that shape artistic and political work. In "Learning from the Underground: Christa Wolf and the Fourth Generation of GDR Writers," Anna Horakova discusses the intergenerational dialogue that takes place in Was bleibt, Wolf's controversial contribution to debates about the GDR after 1989. With "From Pan-German Cosmopolitanism to Nostalgic National Insularity: A Comparative Study of Christa Wolf's Kassandra and Medea," John Pizer contributes a comparative reading of Wolf's novels with respect to race and ethnicity. Beverly M. Weber further problematizes Wolf's literary work in the context of race, engaging anti-Semitism and (anti-)racism in order to trace Wolf's engagement with the Nazi past and the "trouble with race" (164) in Wolf's texts. Catherine Smale interprets Stadt der Engel, oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud (2010; The City of Angels, or The Overcoat of Dr. Freud, 2013) in light of writing in the face of aging and death, a creative journey that is marked by uncertainty and unknowability. Birgit Dahlke revisits the chronotope of Moscow in "The Protocol of Barriers to Thinking? Wolf's Moskauer Tagebücher. Wer wir sind und wer wir waren." As an introduction to the transnational reception of Wolf's work, Caroline Summers problematizes how the process of translation provides an opportunity to "alter the resonance of the text" (241). The last two contributions, Yutian Chen and Fan Zhang's "From Political-Realistic Reading to Multiperspectival Understanding: The Reception of Christa Wolf's Der geteilte Himmel in China" and Huynh Mai Trinh's "Reading Christa Wolf in Socialist Vietnam," engage the reader with the translation and reception of Wolf's work in China and Vietnam before, during, and after the fundamental political and social changes that these countries experienced in the twentieth century, thus seeking to juxtapose the situations in various parts of the world marked by the Cold War. A select bibliography, compiled by Sonja E. Klocke, and a user-friendly index complete the volume. This volume presents a much-needed update and timely contribution to the body of secondary literature on Wolf...