Christa Wolf R.I.P.

Christa Wolf died yesterday, aged 82 -- perhaps the best-known feminist from the other side of the Iron Curtain. In her early 30s she was a (rather unsatisfactory) informer for the Stasi; later, after her 1968 novel The Quest for Christa T., the regime retaliated against her. (The bit about "exile" in the obit seems a bit much; she died in Berlin.) The Guardian obit ranks her with Grass as "the nation's most important postwar writer."

Back in my grad-school days, I studied several of her feminist essays, which I recall as being more profound in some ways than the Western feminists I was reading; alas, the details fade, and who knows where that sheaf of photocopies ended up .... Perhaps someone will put together A Christa Wolf Reader.

(Via Jessa Crispin, who links to a good interview with her.)