Introduction: "A feeling for history" : the Popular Front novel
Epic forms and the crisis of the novel
After the revolution : Hans Marchwitza, The Kumiaks
The tasks of emigration
Place and plot : Anna Seghers, The seventh cross
Ghostly solidarities : Eduard Claudius, Green olives and bare mountains
Die deutsche Misere? : Bertolt Brecht: Mother Courage and her children
Epilogue: the "immense window of change".