Christa Wolf’s great autobiographical novel asks; how does an ordinary child learn to inhabit a monstrous world?

Returning in the 1970s to the Polish town that had been her German childhood home, Wolf reconstructs the life of “Nelly,” a girl growing up under Nazism. Wolf splits the self across child, narrator and remembering adult, worrying constantly at the gap between what was experienced then and what can be understood now. She explores her own obedience, repression, curiosity, language, family life and accomodations, often with harrowing intensity.

Originally published in German as Kindheitsmuster in 1976, the novel is one of Wolf’s major works, and among the sharpest literary examinations of childhood under fascism. Its real subject is not exceptional evil but the formation of consciousness: how people become capable of living inside systems they may later struggle to comprehend. Translated from the German by Ursule Molinaro and Hedwig Rappolt.

Virago Press, London, 1983. Virago Modern Classics edition. Paperback.  Moderate shelf and handling wear to wrappers, with rubbing and creasing to edges and corners, particularly the lower front corner; pages age-toned but clean and binding sound. Good condition.