In No Place on Earth, Christa Wolf imagines the meeting of two young nineteenth-century German writers—the dramatist Heinrich von Kleist and the poetess Karoline von Günderrode…. In their mysterious encounter, which seems to both writers to be, like Kleist's description of its Rhineland setting, "a sort of poet's dream," they share a utopian vision of their artistic potential…. Both sense that this meeting will be their only one; when the afternoon—and the novel—ends, they must re-enter history. Two years after the hour of their fictional encounter, Günderrode will stab herself to death with a silver dagger; six years later, Kleist too will commit suicide.

Like most of Wolf's earlier fiction … No Place On Earth is about people trying to reconcile themselves to the difficult worlds they live in. A prominent East German novelist and critic, a feminist and a Socialist, Wolf has spent...