Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays

by Christa Wolf, Jan Van Heurck (Translator)

Overview

In this volume, the distinguished East German writer Christa Wolf retells the story of the fall of Troy, but from the point of view of the woman whose visionary powers earned her contempt and scorn. Written as a result of the author's Greek travels and studies, Cassandra speaks to us in a pressing monologue whose inner focal points are patriarchy and war. In the four accompanying pieces, which take the form of travel reports, journal entries, and a letter, Wolf describes the novel's genesis. Incisive and intelligent, the entire volume represents an urgent call to examine the past in order to insure a future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374519049
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	05/01/1988
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	620,080
Product dimensions:	5.45(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

In 1980 East German author Christa Wolf took a trip to Greece accompanied by her husband, Gerhard. In 1982 she was awarded a guest lectureship at the University of Frankfurt, where in May she delivered a series of five "Lectures on Poetics" relating to her Greek travels and studies. The fifth "lecture" was ad raft of the novel Cassandra, which she then revised and expanded for publication. The four introductory lectures were published separately in Germany under the title Conditions of a Narrative: Cassandra; The Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics (Voraussetzungen einer Erzählung: Kassandra). This volume presents the novel first, followed by its companion lectures, which illuminate its background and implications.

Editorial Reviews

"An East German woman writer, cought in the civil war's politics and gender, has meditated upon the primordial civic strife formed by Homer, and produced a piercing and beautiful novel." -- The Los Angeles Times

Richard Eder

"With knowledge, insight, and foreboding, Christa Wolf has brilliantly rewritten history, and in viewing the past to the eyes of the doomed seer, she traces its own imminent future." -- The New York Times

Ernest Powell