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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'An account of fraught and complex cross-cultural literary exchange between two highly distinct - even uniquely opposed - reading contexts, Reading Through the Iron Curtain has resonance for all newly global reckonings of the cultural cold war. Working from the extraordinary records of the East German publishing and censorship regime, the authors materially track the production and reception of one country’s corpus as envisioned by another - the ninety Australian titles published in the GDR form an alternative canon, revealing a shadowy literary archive that rewrites Australia’s postwar cultural history from behind the iron curtain, and illuminate multiple ironies for the GDR as a ‘reading nation’. This book brings together leading German and Australian scholars in the fields of book history, German and Australian cultural history, Australian and postcolonial literatures, and postcolonial and cross-cultural theory, with emerging writers currently navigating between the two cultures.' (Publication summary)
Contents
- Introduction : South by East : World Literature's Cold War Compass, single work criticism (p. 1-32)
- Censorship, Australian Literature and Foreign-Language Books in East German Publishing History, single work criticism (p. 35-50)
- Towards a Cross-Border Canon : Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life Behind the Wall, single work criticism (p. 51-70)
- Community, Difference, Context : (Re)reading the Contact Zone, single work criticism (p. 71-90)
- Sedition as Realism : Frank Hardy's Power without Glory Parts the Iron Curtain, single work criticism (p. 93-116)
- Katharine Susannah Prichard, Dymphna Cusack and 'Women on the Path of Progress', single work criticism (p. 117-138)
- Walter Kaufmann : Walking the Tightrope, single work criticism (p. 139-162)
- Fictionalising Australia for the GDR : Adventure Writer Joachim Specht, single work criticism (p. 163-186)
- 'To Do Something for Australian Literature' : Anthologizing Australia for the German Democratic Republic of the 1970s, single work criticism (p. 187-208)
- 'There I'm a Nobody; Here I'm a Marxian Writer' : Australian Writers in the East, single work criticism (p. 211-220)
- Behind the Wall, through Australian Eyes : Anna Funder's Stasiland, single work criticism (p. 221-238)
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Because It Was Exotic, Because It Was So Far Away : Bernhard Scheller in Conversation with Christina Spittel,
Christina Spittel
(interviewer),
single work
interview
Interview with German critic Bernhard Scheller in Windmühlenstraße, Leipzig.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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[Review] Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic : Reading through the Iron Curtain
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Comparative Literature Studies , vol. 55 no. 1 2018; (p. 224-229)' This appealing, aptly illustrated essay collection on the selective production and reception of Australian literature in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) brings together eleven essays written by Australian and German authors.' (Introduction)
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Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic : Reading through the Iron Curtain Edited by Nicole Moore and Christina Spitte
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 10 no. 1 2017;'Emine Sevgi Özdamer’s protagonist in the tale Career of Char: Memories of Germany is ‘a witness of the solitude of the German high rise dwellers’. As she goes through her daily routine she ‘listens to the sounds of loneliness’1 and is able to inhabit only a rigidly fugitive state of mind.' (Introduction)
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[Review Essay] : Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic : Reading Through the Iron Curtain
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , May no. 61 2017;'This volume of essays is an engaging study of the reception of Australian literature in the GDR, the former East Germany. It explores the remarkable story of the publication and reception of Australian literature in the GDR by a state sponsored ‘publishing combine’ consisting of writers, editors, government officials, and censors. Some ninety-five titles by Australian authors dot the short history of the GDR from the early 1950s until that nation’s demise with German unification in 1990. Some titles, such as Marcus Clarke’s convict narrative For the Term of His Natural Lifehad a long and highly successful publishing history in the GDR, running into multiple reprints. Others such as Frank Hardy’s Power Without Glory (translated into German in 1952) paved the way for a steady stream of communist and social realist writers to travel to an ideologically congenial East Germany in the 1950s and 60s. Novels like these were refracted through a particular interpretive matrix in the GDR, remediated by publishers for pressing ideological purposes. As translators and cultural intermediaries, editors and translators in the GDR, often Anglophone academics, interpreted the history and culture of Australia as doubled: ‘geographically exotic’ yet ‘politically retrograde’, a utopic experiment whose depredations indexed the exploitative system of world-capitalism.' (Introduction)
-
[Review Essay] : Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic : Reading Through the Iron Curtain
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , May no. 61 2017;'This volume of essays is an engaging study of the reception of Australian literature in the GDR, the former East Germany. It explores the remarkable story of the publication and reception of Australian literature in the GDR by a state sponsored ‘publishing combine’ consisting of writers, editors, government officials, and censors. Some ninety-five titles by Australian authors dot the short history of the GDR from the early 1950s until that nation’s demise with German unification in 1990. Some titles, such as Marcus Clarke’s convict narrative For the Term of His Natural Lifehad a long and highly successful publishing history in the GDR, running into multiple reprints. Others such as Frank Hardy’s Power Without Glory (translated into German in 1952) paved the way for a steady stream of communist and social realist writers to travel to an ideologically congenial East Germany in the 1950s and 60s. Novels like these were refracted through a particular interpretive matrix in the GDR, remediated by publishers for pressing ideological purposes. As translators and cultural intermediaries, editors and translators in the GDR, often Anglophone academics, interpreted the history and culture of Australia as doubled: ‘geographically exotic’ yet ‘politically retrograde’, a utopic experiment whose depredations indexed the exploitative system of world-capitalism.' (Introduction)
-
Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic : Reading through the Iron Curtain Edited by Nicole Moore and Christina Spitte
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 10 no. 1 2017;'Emine Sevgi Özdamer’s protagonist in the tale Career of Char: Memories of Germany is ‘a witness of the solitude of the German high rise dwellers’. As she goes through her daily routine she ‘listens to the sounds of loneliness’1 and is able to inhabit only a rigidly fugitive state of mind.' (Introduction)
-
[Review] Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic : Reading through the Iron Curtain
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Comparative Literature Studies , vol. 55 no. 1 2018; (p. 224-229)' This appealing, aptly illustrated essay collection on the selective production and reception of Australian literature in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) brings together eleven essays written by Australian and German authors.' (Introduction)