[In A Model Childhood] the narrator—called Nelly—describes her visit, together with her husband (called H), her brother Lutz and her daughter Lenka to her native town, formerly Landsberg but today Grozów Wielkopolski in Poland.

The superficial reason for the journey was what is called "tourism to home-towns," but the deeper motivation for Nelly was to recover for herself and lay bare to her daughter the past of her childhood in Landsberg under Hitler and during the war. (p. 11)

Christa Wolf memorably describes the German retreat and the Russian advance in the East. As recovery of time lost this book is successful. However, bound up with the effort of remembering, there is a great deal else: discourses on the nature of memory, the writer's self-examination about the book that she is writing, constant switching in time from 1971 back to the Hitler era, the dumbly uncomprehending attitude...