SOURCE: A review of What Remains and The Author's Dimension, in Wilson Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 3, Summer, 1993, pp. 90–91.

In the following review of What Remains and The Author's Dimension, the critic finds Wolf's writings “dated” and tainted by her collaboration with East German authorities.

These stories and essays by the former East Germany's most famous writer arrive here under a cloud: the recent revelation that from 1959 to 1962 Wolf was an Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (I.M.), an informal collaborator for the East German secret police, the dreaded Stasi. Suddenly Christa Wolf, who was once considered her country's dissident Joan of Arc, appears to be a quisling who slept with the enemy. With this knowledge, how should a reader respond to her novella What Remains, which evokes the life of a person living under constant Stasi surveillance?

Wolf recently said she fears “being reduced to these two letters”—I.M. Although...