Parting from Phantoms is a window into the soul of the most prominent writer of the German Democratic Republic and its most famous export, Christa Wolf. The essays, diary entries, and letters in this book document four agonizing years in Wolf's personal history and paint a vivid portrait of the cultural and political situation in the former German Democratic Republic. This collection stands as an important testimony to the personal and cultural costs of German reunification. "The works in this book constitute an essential document of the history of reunified Germany, and this alone recommends it to scholars and those interested in current European events."— Publishers Weekly "Christa Wolf was arguably the most influential writer of a nation that no longer exists. . . . Parting from Phantoms traces the fever chart of her anguish. . . . In some ways, the rawness of the present volume is its greatest contribution, and its bona fides—testifying to the human cost of deception and self-deception."—Todd Gitlin, Nation "A thrilling display of ideological soul-searching."—Ilan Stavans, Newsday , Favorite Books of 1997 Christa Wolf 's (1929-2011) other works include the ground-breaking Cassandra, Patterns of Childhood and The Quest for Christa T . She has been awarded many prizes, among them the Büchner Prize of the German Academy of Language and Poetry the Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the Geschwister Scholl Prize of the city of Munich.