SOURCE: Robinson, David W. “Abortion as Repression in Christoph Hein's The Distant Lover.” New German Critique (winter 1993): 65–78.

In the following essay, Robinson examines the oppression and sense of violation experienced by the character Claudia in The Distant Lover.

East German playwright and novelist Christoph Hein rose to sudden prominence in the early 1980s with the publication of his somber novella, The Distant Lover (Der fremde Freund, 1982; published in the West as Drachenblut). Although the book's rather bleak depiction of life in the GDR was predictably attacked or praised by politically minded critics in the GDR and the FRG, its great popularity among readers in both Germanies attested to a shock of recognition that transcended political boundaries. The book is narrated by Claudia, a successful, intelligent, divorced, and childless East Berlin doctor who relates the events of her life during the preceding year. Near the middle of the book...