Brigitte Reimann, Christa Wolf, and Irmtraud Morgner are representative of the first generation of women writers of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Reimann's career documents the literary history of East Germany during its first quarter century; her works reflect the issues that confronted society as well as literature in the GDR. Critics regard her early works less for their literary quality than for what Fritz J. Raddatz calls their seismographic aspect: they reveal "die politische Moral, die Hoffnungen und Verzweiflungen, die Vorstellungen und Klischees, die Ehrlichkeit und die Verstellungen" (the political morality, the hopes and doubts, the conceptions and clichés, the honesty and the disguises) of East Germany. From antifascist themes to Bitterfelder Weg (Bitterfeld Way) and from Ankunft (arrival) literature to Republikflucht (flight from the [German Democratic] Republic), Reimann reflected what was happening in the GDR. Her final work, Franziska Linkerhand: Roman (1974), along with Morgner's...