SOURCE: Vliet, Ann. “Love at Arm's Length.” Washington Post Book World 19, no. 26 (25 June 1989): 4.

In the following review of The Distant Lover, Vliet examines the narrator's withdrawal from human relationships and the origination of her emotional barriers.

As early as 1985, Christoph Hein was being called a major new voice in East German letters, a highly literate and socially conscious poet, playwright, novelist and critic. But The Distant Lover, first published in German in 1982, is Hein's first work to be translated into English. That it took so long is a bit surprising, given the readability of its prose and the universality of its insight.

Reading the book is an active experience, a tug of war between reader and narrator. After the dream-like prologue, showing a frightened woman caught on a narrow beam high over a dangerous chasm, unable to cross or retreat, the conscious narrator controls the board:

Even on...