WHAT REMAINS and Other Stories

by Christa Wolf ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1993

Ten years' worth of stories by (formerly East) German writer Wolf (Accident, 1989; No Place on Earth, 1982; etc.), with the title novella being of most interest: a woman writer is being followed closely by secret police, with her own internal censor in full gear as well. Wolf's career has been more a haunting of Soviet-bloc literature than a challenge to it: she creates a kind of critical nausea through indirection, blank spots, and implications. In her novels and memoirs this aphasic quality to her writing works as an eventual spell; here, in shorter works, it seems to function leas securely. There are a few direct satires: ""The New Life and Opinions of a Tomcat"" (a cat cataloguing, in good German fashion, every vagary of human behavior); ""A Little Outing to H."" (a town populated with discarded characters from fiction); and ""Self-experiment"" (a woman scientist agrees to take a drug that will turn her into a man). There are also some notebook-like, feckless chroniclings of the everyday (""Unter den Linden"" and ""Tuesday, September 27""). But only the first memoir--""Exchanging Glances"" (Wolf and her German family futilely trying to keep a step ahead of the conquering Russian army at the end of WW II)--and the title novella allow a real focus to emerge, allow for a subject centered enough to be treated with immediacy, as well as with Wolf's abstracting irony.

Pub Date: March 1, 1993

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 270

Publisher: "Farrar, Straus & Giroux"

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992

Categories: FICTION