A fragmentary work that stands as a testament to Wolf's skill as a
thinker, storyteller, and memorializer of humanity's greatest
struggles.
Christa Wolf tried for years to find a way to write about her childhood
in Nazi Germany. In her 1976 book Patterns of Childhood, she explained
why it was so difficult: "Gradually, over a period of months, the
dilemma has emerged: to remain speechless or to live in the third
person, these seem to be the options. One is impossible, the other
sinister." During 1971 and 1972 she made thirty-three attempts to start
the novel, abandoning each manuscript only pages in. Eulogy for the
Living, written over the course of four weeks, is the longest of those
fragments. In its pages, Wolf recalls with crystalline precision the
everyday details of her life as a middle-class grocer's daughter, and
the struggles within the family--struggles common to most families, but
exacerbated by the rise of Nazism. And as Nazism fell, the Wolfs fled
west, trying to stay ahead of the rampaging Red Army.