The first English translation of this stirring novel of loyalty, fear and sibling love, by one of the GDR's most important writers.

1960. The border between West and East Germany has closed. "I will never forgive you for this," says Uli, to his sister Elizabeth.

For Elizabeth, the GDR is her generation's chance to build a glorious, egalitarian socialist future. For Uli, it is a place of stricture and oppression. Separating them is the ever-wider chasm of the party line; over them looms the twin spectres of opportunity and fear.

In prose as bold as a machete stroke, Brigitte Reimann - herself a loyal socialist - battles with the clash of idealism and suppression, familial love and individualist desires, in this celebrated classic of postwar East German literature.