They Divided the Sky: A Novel by Christa Wolf

First published in 1963, in East Germany, Christa Wolf's They Divided the Sky is one of the top 100 Must—Reads (Deutsche Welle).

tells the story of a young couple, living in the new, socialist, East Germany, whose relationship is tested to the extreme not only because of the political positions they gradually develop but, very concretely, by the Berlin Wall, which went up on August 13, 1961.

The story is set in 1960 and 1961, a moment of high political cold war tension between the East Bloc a...