Woman in the Pillory

Regular price €16.99
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alone in berlin
arthur schnitzler
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behind the curtain
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christa wolf
clarice lispector
classics
communism
disenchantment
east germany
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family
gdr
german
hans fallada
harvest
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katja hoyer
life on the farm
literary fiction
marriage
on the rural
shirley jackson
strong female protagonist
the reconstruction of nations
the sibling society
third reich
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transformational culture
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Product details

  • ISBN 9780241718988
  • Weight: 200g
  • Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
  • Publication Date: 13 Nov 2025
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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A gripping, never-before-translated novella by the cult writer of Siblings

Kathrin – five years into a disenchanting marriage – struggles to work the farm with her sister-in-law while her husband Heinrich is away fighting for the Third Reich. To help them with the harvest, Heinrich arranges for Alexei, a Russian prisoner of war, to labour in the fields. Though initially suspicious of this watchful stranger, Kathrin is soon drawn to Alexei, with ruinous consequences.

First published in 1956, Woman in the Pillory is a formative novella by one of East Germany’s most significant writers, showcasing Brigitte Reimann’s vivid ideological engagement with the legacy of Nazi Germany and the Communist drive to create ‘a new kind of person’ following the devastation of the war.

Translated by Lucy Jones

Brigitte Reimann (1933-1973) was among East Germany's most significant writers. Like her heroines, she was spirited and outspoken, addressing issues and sensibilities otherwise repressed in the GDR. She believed passion­ately in socialism, yet never joined the party; stayed with her second husband, yet pursued a series of affairs. Her stated aim was to live 'thirty wild years instead of seventy well-behaved ones'. In 1960, her brother left for the West and she began writing Siblings. She died from cancer at the age of thirty-nine, a celebrated writer and cult figure. Lucy Jones is a British translator based in Berlin. She has translated the work of Anke Stelling and Ronald M. Schernikau, among others, and was runner-up in the Schlegel-Tieck Prize in 2023 for her translation of Die Geschwister (Siblings) by Brigitte Reimann. Her own writing has appeared in SAND, Pigeon Pages NYC, LitroMag and others.