The German List

“August” is Christa Wolf’s last piece of fiction: she revisits her stay at a tuberculosis hospital in the winter of 1946/47, which makes up the closing scenes of her 1976 novel “Patterns of Childhood”. This time, however, the perspective is a very different one: that of August, a young patient who has lost both parents to the war. He adores the older girl Lilo, a rebellious teenager who holds things together on the wards. Sixty years later, August reminisces about the things she taught him. Written in taut, affectionate prose, “August” offers new insight into Wolf’s work, and provides her first and last male protagonist.

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