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Stasiland

Stasiland 1

Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

by Anna Funder
Paperback
Publication Date: 05/12/2003
4/5 Rating 1 Review

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Truth can be stranger - and more fascinating - than fiction.

Anna Funder tells extraordinary stories from the underbelly of the most perfected surveillance state of all time, the former East Germany. Funder meets Miriam, the sixteen-year-old who might have started World War III. She visits the regime's cartographer, obsessed to this day with the Berlin Wall, then gets drunk with the legendary 'Mik Jegger' of the east, once declared by the authorities 'no longer to exist'. And she finds spies and Stasi men, still loyal to the Firm as they wait for the next revolution.

Stasiland is a lyrical, at times funny account of the courage some people found to withstand the dictatorship, and the consequences for those who collaborated. Funder explores the daily chaos and harsh beauty of Berlin, a place where some people are trying to remember, and others just as hard to forget. Stasiland is a brilliant debut by a prodigiously gifted writer.

Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.

ISBN:
9781877008917
9781877008917
Category:
Political oppression & persecution
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
05-12-2003
Language:
English
Publisher:
Text Publishing
Country of origin:
Australia
Pages:
304
Dimensions (mm):
198x129x22mm
Weight:
0.28kg
Anna Funder

Anna Funder is the author of the acclaimed All That I Am, winner of the 2012 Miles Franklin Literary Award, among other awards.

Her first book, the internationally bestselling Stasiland, won the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize and was published in twenty countries and translated into sixteen languages.

Anna Funder is a former DAAD and Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. She grew up in Melbourne and Paris and now lives in New York with her husband and family.

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Funder explores what it was like to live in Germany that was ruled by the German Democratic Republic, through telling the stories of people in East Berlin as well as ex-Stasi men (Stasi being the secret service police, that spied on citizens).

She meets with Frau Paul - a woman who had the Berlin Wall go 'straight through her heart', refusing her access to see her terribly sick son, to the main who painted the line where the Wall was to be built.

This book moved me, and it still lingers with me, as I find myself thinking back to these people who were affected during these times and their stories still remain untold. This essentially is what drove Funder to write this exquisite example of literary journalism, as she wanted to 'represent what it was like to live in the GDR' honestly. By being an Australian author who is fluent in German and spends copious amounts of time there, she is able to present a honest view on what happened and the people that are still suffering under the weight of the Wall, although it has already fallen.

Funder immerses herself within the text, allowing the reader to see how she deals and is winded by the weight of these peoples life stories, of which they have not shared before. At times the facts dragged on, the dates blended together, and names of historical figures faded away from my memory as I began to focus solely on the stories. At points it was bland and dry, hard to read on, this could be due to not being able to escape from the empathy you feel for the people she interviews.

This book is not for the faint-hearted, it is slightly confronting at times, as the reader is told how people were tortured for reasons we would now simply dismiss. I would highly recommend this to those who are interested in historical books, that are indeed intriguing and provide much more than just facts. Funder finds that people are still suffering, and that to our dismay some ex-Stasi men believe the Berlin Wall was 'necessary' and the killings at the border was an 'act of peace'. In this sense, this is where it is confronting, as it deals with the facts of what humans did to other humans.

Contains Spoilers No
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