East Berlin literature after 1989 is about a vanishing subject — a defunct political system and a disappearing way of life. The wall, after all, was a dramatic and palpable reminder of the divided Germany. East Berlin, where some of the most drastic changes in the urban structure took place, embodies the city's transformation into the New Berlin. While East Germans contribute the majority of texts, West Germans, immigrants, and writers from other backgrounds also add to a body of work whose timeline and geography are defined by life before and after the wall.

With few exceptions East Berlin texts of the 1990s and beyond view the GDR from a post-unification perspective. The end of the East German state, moreover, led to controversies over who should own its memory and how this memory will be constructed. These two aspects gave rise to a rich sub-genre of Berlin literature that includes documentary texts, diaries and interviews, fiction, and poetry.