This book offers a thorough examination of the novels of Irmtraud Morgner 19331990 one of the most talented compelling and overlooked writers within East German feminist and avantgarde circles. Using a combination of theoretical approaches including Adornos aesthetic theories and Bakhtinian analyses of dialogism and the carnivalesque the author traces Morgners engagement with postmodernist aesthetic strategies back to her efforts beginning in the early 1970s to pose questions about effective political practices. Morgners work sheds new light on the fraught relationship between GDR intellectuals and the state a hotly debated topic that marks most recent attempts to understand literary culture in the German Democratic Republic. Situating Morgners fiction at the intersection of postmodern and feminist theory this study also offers new evidence for viewing literature from the GDR as significantly more complex and aesthetically interesting than has been previously assumed.