Christa Wolf was a German literary critic, novelist and essayist. She was one of the best known writers to have emerged from the former East Germany. Der geteilte Himmel was her first full-length novel, published when she was thirty-five years old; it was both a great literary success and a political scandal.Accused of having a 'decadent' attitude with regard to the new socialist Germany and deliberately misrepresenting the workers who are the foundation of this new state, Wolf survived a wave of political and other attacks after its publication. However, she went on to become the best-known East German writer of her generation, a writer who established an international reputation and never stopped working toward improving the socialist reality of the GDR.Christa Wolf passed away in December 2011.
