The Red Army Faction or Baader-Meinhof Group (1970-98) has been the subject of a very large number of German novels, from serious literary fiction to best-selling thrillers. Through an analysis of plot lines, recurrent character types, narrative disavowals and omissions, and adaptations of national classics, this study reveals an unease at the heart of the democratic settlement in the Federal Republic. Julian Preece sheds new light on the emotional character of postwar Germany, its uneasy relationship with its own past and the authority of the state. This book is the first to examine this rich literary corpus, treating it as a political unconscious which expresses submerged anxieties and moral blind-spots in Europe's most powerful country.
