Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

Anna Funder

Apr 2011 · Granta Books

About this ebook

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In Stasiland, winner of the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize, Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany, a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight, and one in fifty East Germans were informing on their countrymen and women. She meets Miriam, who as a sixteen-year-old might have started the Third World War, visits the man who painted the line which became the Berlin Wall and gets drunk with the legendary 'Mik Jegger' of the East, who the authorities once declared - to his face - to 'no longer exist'.

Ratings and reviews

This is one of the best books I've read. You know when you read the first sentences and fall in love with the writer's voice in an instant? That's what happened to me with this book, which tells the story of one of the cruelest dictatorships on earth. Anna Funder tells the stories of victims and perpetrators alike with wonderful descriptions that make me envious as an author. You'll shed tears while you read the story of Miriam and Julia and many more. The truth is stranger than fiction.

Funder writes with such honesty. Her skills of observation - and memory recall - are impeccable and she manages to paint a wonderfully vivid picture of the grey world of Stasi-controlled East Germany in such a way as to transport one there, in the old East. This is a wonderful, absorbing read.

About the author

Anna Funder was born in Melbourne in 1966. She has worked as an international lawyer and a radio and television producer. In 1997 she was writer-in-residence at the Australia Centre in Potsdam. She lives in Sydney with her husband and family.