Monika Maron's biography reads like a text book example of life in a divided Germany. Born in West Berlin to communist parents,the family later moved to East Germany. Monika Maron believed in the communist state until her own work was censored. In 1988 she returned to West Germany. Today the writer says the fall of the Wall was for her a stroke of good fortune. Her own mother didn't speak to her for a year after her first book Flight of Ashes was only published in the West. On June 16 Monika Maron is to receive the German National Prize. ARTS.21 spoke with this impressive woman who writes to refute those who view the fomer communist regime through rose-coloured glasses.