SOURCE: Mueller, Dennis. Review of Die Ritter der Tafelrunde: Komodie, by Christoph Hein. World Literature Today 64, no. 2 (autumn 1990): 630–31.

In the following review of Die Ritter der Tafelrunde, Mueller examines the play as a representation of the East German regime of Communist Party Secretary Erich Honecker.

Christoph Hein is an East German author who has rapidly risen to prominence in the past few years. His novella Drachenblut (1983) was translated into all the major European languages; his 1989 novel Der Tangospieler (see WLT 64:2, p. 308) received high praise in a Zeit review by Volker Hage (“Sage niemand, daβ es in der Literatur der deutschen Sprache derzeit nichts zu lesen gebe”); and in the new edition of the Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR (1989) Wolfgang Emmerich wrote: “Kein Autor der DDR hat binnen weniger Jahre die Literatur seines Landes so schlagend und so nachhaltig verändert wie Hein.”

The author's most recent play, Die Ritter...