Search results for ""author jan van heurck""

Documenting four painful years in the life of German writer Christa Wolf, this collection of essays, letters and diary entries portrays the cultural and political situation in the former German Democratic Republic. An admired writer, Wolf was reviled after the publication of her novel "What Remains", which was attacked by the press as a belated attempt to establish herself as a victim of the Stasi (the GDR's secret police). The criticism discredited Wolf as a cultural hero in the eyes of many Germans, and plunged her into a deep personal crisis. This volume shows Wolf coming to terms with her ambiguous past and an unforgiving present. Among the writings gathered in this book are discourses with Jurgen Habermas and Gunter Grass, a series of diary entries, and a critical account of Berlin one year after unification, entitled "Whatever Happened to your Smile: Wasteland Berlin 1990". In addition, Wolf defends herself from the media campaign waged against her in Germany. The truth about the GDR, she argues, will be found in its literature, not in the security files used to discredit the GDR's culture.

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Goethe was a master of the short prose form. His two narrative cycles, Conversations of German Refugees and Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, both written during a high point of his career, address various social issues and reveal his experimentation with narrative and perspective. A traditional cycle of novellas, Conversations of German Refugees deals with the impact and significance of the French Revolution and suggests Goethe's ideas on the social function of his art. Goethe's last novel, Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, is a sequel to Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and to Conversations of German Refugees and is considered to be his most remarkable novel in form.

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