Flight of Ashes - Tapa blanda

"Initially torn between the story she knows is expected of her and one that expresses her horror at this earthly hell, she finally gives in to her outrage and writes a scathing piece. One editor after another up the chain of command, all the way to the smarmy and dangerous comrade-in-chief, praises her work but buries the story - and probably her career - in an avalanche of empty rhetoric...A brooding and bleak look at a culture of censorship." KIRKUS

"Uncomfortably relevant yet also touching and humorous - examines press censorship, industrial stagnation and political secrecy as an East German journalist battles to write the truth." FEMINIST BOOK FORTNIGHT SELECTION

"Thought-provoking." THE FRIEND

"Although West Berlin is only a few tantalizing yards away, Josefa does not see it as an unconditional invitation to freedom. Instead it seems that Josefa's version of freedom is to be found in the upper air where old history meets new and oxygen floods back into the memory and the imagination." THE LITERARY REVIEW

"Monika Maron has much to say about the lives of workers, the position of women, politics, and the press in the German Democratic Republic...highly realistic. David Marinelli's translation...manages to capture the flavor of the original. Recommended." CHOICE

"Maron is excellent on the gradual enmeshing of her heroine within the stagnating bureaucracy, including a visit to the Comrade-in-Charge in a labyrinthine office block that is worthy of that greatest of (pre-Communist) delineators of the bureaucratic nightmare, Kafka... Flight of Ashes is told with an overwhelming regard for the human dimension of her story, for Josefa herself, and the ambiguous moral position of her friends and colleagues." THE SCOTSMAN

"Maron's skillful deployment of the warring elements in Josefa's character complements her approach to the novel's political problems. A noble cause finds for its champion a flawed heroine; the machinery of repression is tended by rather likeable, often gentle souls, some of whom know a little more about struggle than Josefa does, having paid dearly for their party membership in the '30s." THE VILLAGE VOICE

"Intelligent and perceptive" THE LISTENER

"Monika Maron aims higher than mere criticism of the Communist-controlled press. By dramatizing the suffering of the feisty young journalist, the author portrays any person of conscience, on either side of the Iron Curtain, caught between public and private truth. As it illuminates Josefa's agonizing choice, Flight of Ashes serves as a powerful fable for our time." BELLES LETTRES