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In this study, Geoffrey Westgate offers a new understanding of Irmtraud Morgner by reading her as a specifically East German writer. Through close analysis of her works â€“ the early journalism and socialist realism, the â€˜socialist modernismâ€™ of the banned Rumba auf einen Herbst, the largely neglected, but key, texts of the late 1960s, the major novels, Beatriz and Amanda, and the final, uncompleted work, Das heroische Testament â€“ the book examines the literary strategies Morgner adopted with respect to pivotal cultural-political developments in the GDR. The first to consider the trajectory of Morgnerâ€™s career as a whole, the study uncovers texts which have not appeared in bibliographies of her writings and draws on new biographical material, including the writerâ€™s NachlaÃŸ.In addition, the author uses archival material from the GDR Ministerium fÃ¼r Kultur and Ministerium fÃ¼r Staatssicherheit to illustrate how Morgnerâ€™s texts were censored and how the writer was monitored by the secret police. The book therefore provides a case study of official GDR Autorenpolitik and also shows that Morgnerâ€™s oeuvre cannot be fully understood unless it is viewed in the context of this state control and surveillance. Morgnerâ€™s writings bear complex but eloquent testimony to the possibilities for literature in a dictatorship.