Women in the Federal Republic, the former GDR, Switzerland and Austria have initiated a remarkable literary movement, especially after 1968, which is also attracting growing attention elsewhere. Informed by critical feminist and literary theory, this broad-ranging collection, the first of its kind, examines the history of these writings in the context of the social and political developments in the respective countries. It combines survey chapters with detailed studies of prominent authors whose work is often unavailable in English.

Chris Weedon is Reader in Critical and Cultural Theory at the University of Wales, Cardiff.

Chapter 1. Reading Women's Writing: Feminist Critical Approaches
C. Weedon

Chapter 2. Women's Writing in Occupies Germany 1945-1949
F. Meyer

Chapter 3. Women's Writing in the 1950s and 1960s
F. Meyer

Chapter 4. The Early Novels of Ruth Rehmann
F. Meyer

Chapter 5. Women's Writing 1968-1980
C. Rapisarda

Chapter 6. Women's Writing of the 1980s and 1990s
M. Littler

Chapter 7. Original Differentiation: the Poetics of Anna Duden
J. Bossinade

Chapter 8. Searching for Intercultural Communication: Emine Sevgi Özdamar, a Turkish Woman Writer in Germany
I. Neubert

Chapter 9. Women Writers in the GDR 1945-1989
E. Kaufmann

Chapter 10. Development in East German Women's Writing since Autumn 1989
E. Kaufmann

Chapter 11. Reading Christa Wolf
C. Weedon

Chapter 12. Postwar Austrian Women Writers
A. Fiddler

Chapter 13. Reading Ingeborg Bachmann
E. Boa

Chapter 14. Reading Elfriede Jelinek
A. Fiddler

Chapter 15. Women's Writing in German-speaking Switzerland
C. Flitner

Afterword
C. Weedon

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index