Understanding Christa Wolf : some prerequisites -- "Identity through bonds" -- "So much light in so much darkness" -- "To be honest, to be lonely" -- "Reality broken in two" -- "Curiosity is a vice of women and cats" -- "Running into knives" -- Romanticists : "precursors, you" -- "Books are deeds" -- "Idyll and catastrophe" -- "Returning home to a foreign land".