Brigitte Reimann

1960. The border between East and West Germany has closed. For Elisabeth - a young painter - the GDR is her generation's chance to build a glorious egalitarian socialist future. For her brother Uli it is a place of stricture and oppression. Separating them is the ever-wider chasm of the party line; over them loom the twin spectres of opportunity and fear and the shadow of their defector brother Konrad. In prose as bold as a scarlet paint stroke Brigitte Reimann battles with the clash of idealism and suppression familial loyalty and desire. The result is this ground-breaking classic of post-war East German literature.