Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder

11:48 pm 31 July 2014

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder

bookshelves: nonfiction, summer-2014, fraudio, published-2003, tbr-busting-2014, germany, journalism, autobiography-memoir, politics, eye-scorcher, history, berlin, betrayal, casual-violence, cold-war, lifestyles-deathstyles, ouch, rid-the-world-of-tyrants, totalitarian

Read from May 22 to July 31, 2014

Read by Danika Fairman

Description: In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited and East Germany ceased to exist. In this book, Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany, including the story of Miriam, who as a 16-year-old might have started World War III.

Read her two books the wrong way around. This non-fiction is superbly written, and she really does have stories that need relating to help us understand DDR because let's face it, no matter how many time the history is read the subject remains hard to get one's head around.

DDR was a paranoid place and awful things happened to ordinary people and Funder has pinned the subject matter smack, bang to the , erm, wall.

I mentioned that I read her books the wrong way around - 'All that I Am', a novel based on factual events, did not resound so well, maybe I am just a non-fiction kind of girl at heart.

Astounding read worth five checkpoint-charlies even though there are some flaws.