Born into a Jewish family and married to a Hungarian Communist, Seghers escaped Nazi-controlled territory through wartime France.

She eventually settled in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), where she worked on cultural and peace issues.

Settling in Mexico City, she founded the anti-fascist 'Heinrich-Heine-Klub', named after the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine.

The Seventh Cross was one of the very few depictions of Nazi concentration camps, in either literature or the cinema, during World War II.

Seghers's best-known short story, the title of her collection in The Outing of the Dead Girls (1946), was written in Mexico.

It was partially autobiographical, drawn from her reminiscence and reimagining of a pre-World War I class excursion on the Rhine river.

Other notable Seghers novels include Sagen von Artemis (1938) and The Ship of the Argonauts (1953), both based on myths.

That year she was also awarded the Georg Büchner Prize for her novel Transit, written in German, and published in English in 1944.

In 1950, she moved to East Berlin, where she co-founded the Academy of the Arts of the GDR, and became a member of the World Peace Council.