One Day a Year

»In 1960, following an invitation from a Moscow newspaper asking her to describe one day, the twenty-seventh of September, ›as precisely as possible‹, Christa Wolf embarked on a journey of discovery and resistance lasting forty years. She would record her thoughts, experiences, and impressions as they unfolded over the course of a single day, the same day every year, for the next four decades.

›How does life happen?‹ This is the question she sets about to answer as writer, mother, wife, citizen, and woman. Wolf offers her readers a meditation on what it means to write from life and to live by writing, and creates, year by year, one of the most spontaneous and enthralling personal accounts of the late twentieth century. One Day a Year is an intimate portrait of life on the ›other side‹ of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War and of the tumultuous changes that so dramatically transformed Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.« (book description from the English edition by Europa Editions)

»This remarkable book offers insight into the mind behind the public figure, collecting accounts that Wolf has written over forty years describing her life on each September 27th as precisely as possible. […] We also follow Wolf’s growing disenchantment, first with what she sees as the lost promise of the German Democratic Republic, then with ›today’s utopia-free situation.‹« The New Yorker

»You turn a page, and a year passes. A book has suddenly been written. In a few long sittings, you can experience not only the sweep of history, but also the changing of a very particular mind.« Benjamin Lytal, The New York Sun

»The landscape of Wolf's memory is a mosaic of juxtapositions: past and present, public and private, mundane and profound, dream and consciousness.« Joscelyn Jurich, Bookforum

»One Day a Year is a key text for the history of mentalities in the GDR and what remains of it.« Helmut Böttiger, Die Welt

»Next to seemingly banal observations, such as the weather in the early hours of the morning, the daily routine of a working mother, Christa Wolf keeps asking herself the one crucial question: Should I stay in the GDR or not? The combination of history, personal everyday life, political essay, artistic reflection and self-doubt is absolutely unique.« Brigitte