Before the fall of the Berlin Wall many East German writers were praised in the Western world as dissident voices of truth, bravely struggling with the draconian constraints of living under the GDR's communist regime. However, since unification, Germany has been rocked by scandals showing the level to which the Stasi, the East German Secret Police, controlled these same writers. This is the first study in English to systematically explore how the writers have responded to the challenge of dealing with the Stasi from the 1950s to the present day. MICHAEL BUTLER Professor of Modern German Literature, University of Birmingham, UK CAROL ANNE COSTABILE-HEMING Associate Professor of German, Southwest Missouri Satte Univesrity, USA MIKE DENNIS Professor of Modern German History, University of Wolverhampton, UK OWEN EVANS Lecturer in German, University of Wales, Bangor, UK STEPHEN J. EVANS University of Wales, Swansea, UK KRISTIE FOELL Associate Professor of German, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA ALISON LEWIS Lecturer, Department of German and Swedish Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia GEORGINA PAUL Lecturer in German Studies, University of Warwick, UK JULIAN PREECE University of Kent, UK KARL-HEINZ SCHOEPS Professor Emeritus of German, University of Illinois, USA DENNIS TATE Professor of German Studies, University of Bath, UK JILL TWARK Assistant Professor of German, East Carolina University, USA REINHARD K. ZACHAU Professor of German, University of the South (Sewanee), USA