SOURCE: Scott, Hilda. “The Women behind the Wall.” Women's Review of Books 7, no. 4 (January 1990): 10.

In the following review, Scott commends Kirsch's insightful portraits of East German women and GDR life in The Panther Woman, though notes that Western readers may miss some of the work's subtle subtext.

The Panther Woman, a very slim volume of interviews with five East German women, which reaches us in the University of Nebraska's “European Women Writers” series, was first published in the German Democratic Republic in 1973. It offers a look back at the generation of women whose adult children we have watched on TV, crossing the Hungarian border into Austria, storming the West German Embassy in Prague, or marching in Leipzig with banners saying, “We'll stay here.” What light can it throw on this upheaval in the most successful of Eastern European socialist societies?

Sarah Kirsch has lived in West Germany since...