[2] The novel tells part of the story of Christa T., a young woman, student, then teacher, then mother, from the German Democratic Republic, who, is suffering from leukemia and is going to die soon.

References and utopias change: Gorky, Makarenko, but also Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann... May 22, 1954, Christa T., Krischan, graduating.

They have three children, sometimes travel west as a family, leave an apartment to build a single-family house in the countryside, isolated, on a small hill, near a lake.

), her notes, letters, sketches, the narrator reconstructs the missing person with light touches: intransigence, aptitude for bitterness .

Christa Ihlenfeld (1929-2011), met Wolf in 1951, when they attended secondary school in Gorzów Wielkopolski, then Landsberg an der Warthe (1257-1945).

Pierre Deshusses, "  Christa Wolf, writer from the former GDR, leaves a work marked by doubt and hope  ", Le Monde, December 1, 2011.

Martine Schnell, Autour de Christa Wolf Tome 2: Literary, historical and political reflections from 1960 to 2011, BoD - Books on Demand, 2014.