Wolf's attempt to use their love affair as an allegory for international relations between Germany and the Soviet Union fails.
Her breakthrough as a writer came with the novel Der geteilte Himmel (1963; translated as The Divided Heaven, 1965). Published shortly after the building of the Berlin Wall, the book was an instant success and made Wolf, virtually overnight, the best-known author in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
After an accident education student Rita Seidel wakes up in a hospital bed and tries to analyze what has taken place. During her convalescence Rita examines the preceding two years of her life: her love for the chemist Manfred Herrfurth, her move from a small village to the city of Halle, her work in a railroad-car factory, her studies to become a teacher, Manfred's flight to the West just before the erection of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961, and her accident shortly thereafter. The sequence of events is primarily chronological, although there are flashbacks to Rita's and Manfred's early childhood.
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