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Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays (Paperback)

~ (Author), Jan Van Heurck (Translator) "It was here. This is where she stood..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mount Ida, Asia Minor, Panthous the Greek (more...)

3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In this volume, the distinguished East German writer Christa Wolf retells the story of the fall of Troy, but from the point of view of the woman whose visionary powers earned her contempt and scorn. Written as a result of the author's Greek travels and studies, Cassandra speaks to us in a pressing monologue whose inner focal points are patriarchy and war. In the four accompanying pieces, which take the form of travel reports, journal entries, and a letter, Wolf describes the novel's genesis. Incisive and intelligent, the entire volume represents an urgent call to examine the past in order to insure a future.

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 1, 1988)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0374519048
ISBN-13: 978-0374519049
Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #364,118 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
It was here. This is where she stood. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mount Ida, Asia Minor, Panthous the Greek, Christa Wolf, Dwarf Woman, Scaean Gate, New York, Palace of Knossos, Thomas Mann, Ajax the Lesser, Pallas Athena, Ingeborg Bachmann, Sir Arthur Evans, United States, House of Atreus, Minoan Crete, Thymbraian Apollo, Trojan War, Aeschylus's Oresteia, Contemporary German, Robert Graves, The Franza Case, Types of Death, West Berlin

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 8 books:

A model childhood by Christa Wolf in Front Matter
The Anger of Achilles by Robert Graves on page 279
No Place on Earth by Christa Wolf in Front Matter
Fall Franza (German Edition) by Bachmann on page 245
Myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford on page 263

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	90% buy the item featured on this page: Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays 3.6 out of 5 stars (17) $12.82
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	3% buy Why Read? 4.1 out of 5 stars (14) $10.08
	2% buy What Remains and Other Stories

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Customer Reviews

17 Reviews

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

3.6 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Literary. What do you expect?, November 30, 2000

By	"suppliciter" - See all my reviews

At the risk of sounding somewhat elitist (if a high school student may call himself that), I have the distinct feeling that many highly critical reviewers of Cassandra have either (1) failed to appreciate the intensely literary nature of the novel, (2) become so fixated on the "apparent" aspects of Wolf's message to notice the infinite subtleties, or (3) been guilty of the most heinous form of reductionism. Admittedly, Cassandra is not an easy read; 138 pages (the story itself) of streaming consciousness is not for the casual reader. Nevertheless, it is precisely this stream of consciousness--one of the most capably written of its form--that unifies the myriad thematic commentaries of the novel into a coherent and powerful message. Also missed are the subtleties behind Wolf's supposedly hyper-feminist message. Wolf is careful to point to the mutability of sexual roles (Anchises and Penthesilea offer superb examples) and the significance of a dualistic appreciation of culturally-derived gender tendencies. Numerous readers are also prone to missing the point of Wolf's revisionist mythology; in doing so they are no less guilty than Wilhem Girnus (DDR editor of Sinn und Form) of fixating upon the "crime" of creating new life in previously established literature. It may be unpleasant to see our heroic figure of Achilles portrayed in a cripplingly negative light, but Wolf's very insistence upon doing so exposes the greatest fallacies of our victory-fixated Western outlook. Cassandra may be too literary for some, too complex for a reader interested in a quick fireside jaunt into Literature Lite, but its immense artistry as a novel may not be so easily ignored.

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, provocative retelling., January 15, 1998

By	Deb Oestreicher (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This is one of those books I've picked up and put down for more than 12 years, and now that I've read it through, I can't imagine why. The retelling of the story of Cassandra--really of the Iliad, from Cassandra's perspective--is completely compelling and provocative, raising questions about what history is and how it's made, and offering an alternate and completely reasonable view of how the Iliad's events could have happened.

Bonus: this volume offers essays providing background on how Christa Wolf came to write the novel--pure gravy for writers, or anyone interested in how stories get born.

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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's a powerful book, intellectually engrossing., May 13, 1998

By A Customer

For about five years I have read, reread and taught (to eleventh graders) Cassandra, and each time I have groped deeper into its human and literary liklihoods. It's still compelling to me for it myriad facets of content and form, but I can't help wondering about the real-politics of Ms Wolf's life and the masculine-feminine politics of our time. There is great learning in it and cause for great deliberation--by a woman awaiting violent death: Would what we call civilization be differently composed if even half our history, philosophy, psychology, politics, art had been penned by women? How was human prehistory ordered? Why is God-presence so matter of fact, and goddess-presence so contentious, if admitted? Who/What is Cybele, really? I can't wait to read Medea.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Myth Retelling
Christa Wolf retells a myth from the the perspective of a woman who was only given a few lines in Euripides' Agamemnon (and mentioned once or twice in the Iliad. Read more

Published 20 months ago by A and B

2.0 out of 5 stars Feminist Deconstruction of Myth
I haven't much to add to previous reviews except a personal response to the text. Yet another tough book to comment on due to its translated form, Christa Wolf attempts to rewrite... Read more

Published on November 27, 2004 by Yan Timanovsky

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful prose, but not quite enough...
"Cassandra" does not read like a novel. Rather, one feels as though one is a member of the jury set to judge the entire life of one woman when the sentance (death) has already... Read more

Published on September 28, 2004 by Jacquelyn Gill

3.0 out of 5 stars judging books....
I'm going with three stars because I haven't read *this* "Cassandra" yet; I just want to point out that all the complaints about stylistic points and language are extremely... Read more

Published on September 17, 2004 by -galwaygirl-

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique
Cassandra by Christa Wolf is a quite difficult (sometimes challenging) work, but a proper understanding allowed me to remain absorbed in the plot. Read more

Published on July 15, 2004 by A. Dani

1.0 out of 5 stars Wrong... And again, wrong.
Forced to read this book due to a third year literature course, and being a lover of great literature as well as 'fireside' reads, I got some chuckles from the 'elitist' ramblings... Read more

Published on January 29, 2004 by Jeremy Davies

5.0 out of 5 stars Prophetic on many levels
Anyone so fixated on this narrative that they don't spend the entire time picking apart the metaphor only proves how engrossing this story really is. Read more

Published on February 20, 2001 by Edward Shaw

5.0 out of 5 stars Cassandra
I have to admit that I had some difficulties in reading this book in the first place. Christa Wolf uses a very stylised language which is not easy to understand although it sounds... Read more

Published on March 30, 2000 by Friederike Kaufel

1.0 out of 5 stars Adds insult to the heroine's injuries.
I love the legends of the prophetess Cassandra, and even adopted her name as my own nom de plume. So, I started out quite biased towards this telling over the more... Read more

Published on March 4, 2000 by Carrie Laben

2.0 out of 5 stars A good idea, gone horribly awry
The most disappointing part of this novel is the great potential that it had. The idea of telling the story of the Fall of Troy from the view of the soothsayer and princess... Read more

Published on March 3, 2000 by cross5104

› See all 17 customer reviews...

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