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.
In their Introduction, “South by East: World Literature's Cold War Compass,” the editors draw out the contextual preconditions for publishing Australian literature in the GDR: the interest in Australia as a postcolonial settler culture and its predilections, the cultural and political relations between Australia and the GDR, the literary institutions in the GDR, the Cold War travel restrictions, the isolation in regard to Western literature, the centralized markets and the censorship control (in both countries!), the GDR's preference for socialist realism (hence no early translations of Christina Stead, Patrick White, or Randolph Stow). The editors describe the GDR's rewriting of Australia's literary history as an “alternative canon” (3). The Introduction outlines the control over cultural production in the GDR...
