Christa Wolf is one of the most prominent postwar German writers. Her works are read and discussed widely in both Germanies, and her reputation is spreading rapidly beyond the German-speaking countries. In addition to her fiction, Wolf has done significant work in the essay form, providing a theoretical basis for her oeuvre.

Christa Ihlenfeld was born in 1929 in Landsberg an der Warthe (today Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland). Her father, Otto Ihlenfeld, was a salesman. In 1945 the invading Red Army forced the German population in the territories east of the Oder-Neiße line to move to the West; the Ihlenfelds settled in Mecklenburg, where Christa worked as secretary to the mayor of Gammelin. After a stay in a tuberculosis sanatorium she finished school in 1949 in Bad Frankenhausen. She joined the Socialist Unity party and, from 1949 to 1953, studied German literature at the Universities of Leipzig and Jena. In...