Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1783085231 ISBN 13: 9781783085231

Verlag: Anthem Press, 2016

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 90 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 illuminates 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.

Book Description:

Presenting an innovative cross-cultural exploration into the censorship regime of Australian literature in East German publishing, this work investigates the exposé of the cultural cold war.

About the Author:

Nicole Moore is a professor of English at the University of New South Wales and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow.

Christina Spittel is a lecturer in English at the University of New South Wales.