Employs research on the GDR's healthcare system along with feminist and queer theory to get at socialism's legacy, revealing a specifically East German literary convention: employment of "symptomatic female bodies" to either enforce or rebel against political and social norms.

Introduction
Disease, Death, and Desire Pre-1989: Christa Wolf's Symptomatic GDR Bodies
Christa Wolf's Goodbye to Socialism?: Illness, Healing, and Faith since 1990
Retrospective Imagination in Post-GDR Literature: Gender, Violence, and Politics in Medical Discourses
Haunted in Post-Wall Germany: Sickness, Symptomatic Bodies, and the Specters of the GDR
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index