SOURCE: A review of Medea, in World Literature Today, Vol. 71, No. 1, Winter, 1997, pp. 142–43.

In the following review, Grawe discusses Wolf's damaged literary reputation following Was bleibt and her implicit self-defense in Medea.

Christa Wolf, formerly everybody's darling in both East and West Germany and a moral as well as a literary authority, was in an excellent position to play an important conciliatory role after the Wendé. Sadly, she failed to do this. In 1990 she published her ill-fated story Was bleibt (see WLT 65:1, p. 111) in which, many critics felt, she had seized upon the first opportunity to portray herself as a Stasi (East German security service) victim. Suddenly Wolf was very controversial indeed. She withdrew from the battleground, accepting an invitation from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she compared herself with the Jews driven into exile by the Nazis, a comment which gave rise to bewilderment...