1960. The border between East and West Germany has closed.

For Elisabeth - a young painter - the GDR is her generation's chance to build an 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. This fervid, ground-breaking novel, written when Reimann was only twenty-seven, remains one of the cult classics of East German literature.