Introduction - from the 1960s to the 1970s - the changing contexts of German literature, D. Roberts; the republic of letters and the state - permutations of Geist and Macht in the Federal Republic since the early 1970s, W. van der Will; political realism of the 1970s, K. Bullivant; neue subjektivitat, M. McGowan; recent German writing and the influence of popular culture, A. Waine; feminist writing in West Germany, J. Wigmore; West German poetry of the 1970s, J. Sierra-Ballester and A. Stephens; the novel of the everyday, D.L. Hoffmeister; the spectre of the Third Reich - the West German novel of the 1970s and national socialism, K. Bullivant; the literaturverfilmungswelle, J. Sandford; the other German literature - convergence and cross-fertilization, D. Tate; Thomas Bernhard, H. Chambers; the end of urbanity - Heinrich Boll in the 1970s, J.H. Reid; chasing the chameleon - with Hans Magnus Enzensberger into the 1970s and beyond, M. Kane; Peter Handke, M. Linstead; surrendering to the logic of flow - reading Alexander Kluge, P. Labanyi; Franz Xaver Kroetz, M. McGowan; when wishing still helped - Peter Schneider's left-wing melancholy, P. Labanyi; Martin Walser, A. Waine; culture, political power and the aesthetics of resistance - Peter Weiss's die asthetik des widerstands, M. Kane; from the 1970s into the 1980s, K. Bullivant.