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Title: Stasiland: True Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder ISBN: 1-86207-580-8 Publisher: Granta Books Pub. Date: May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An engaging read about a little known evil
Comment: This is a hard book to categorise (one bookshop I know of has this on the shelves in Travel, History and Biography!). Anna Funder has written a book about the Stasi, the pervasive secret service of the old East Germany. Rather than do historical research, Funder chooses to interview people from both sides of the story - the victims of the Stasi and the former perpetrators, some repentant, some not.
As the story unfolds the reader follows Funder as she discovers more and more about life before the Wall fell, included that many of the people she deals with in everyday life have extraordinary tales to tell. Without directly explaining, Funder helps the reader see, through the stories she shares, what motivated people to take a stand, either on the side of control or freedom, and she also helps the reader, again through the stories of others, to see how such a regime of control can exist.
This is a great book - Funder allows the stories of others to do their thing, only commenting on her own life to underline feelings or points made. It is a personal tale, and all the better for it, as it makes the book more alive and accessible than the academic tome it could have been. This is the type of book you could recommend to anyone looking for something interesting to read - even if they don't usually read travel, history or biography.
Rating: 3
Summary: Disappointing book but promising author
Comment: Anna Funder seems to be a very interesting, intelligent, and visually stunning young lady (the last I judge from the cover photographs), but she was either too lazy or too distracted to turn this material into a good book.
It's not badly written; the sentences parse and all that. But the book lacks a sense of burning necessity. Here she was in East Berlin, in the 1990s; the Kommis were gone and she had magnificent opportunities to delve into harrowing, sordid tales of oppression and torture in the DDR. Instead she interviews a few victims and party functionaries, and writes of the encounters as though she were heavily tranquilized.
Writing is hard work, and I do believe that Funder was up to doing a full-bore investigative report (like James Michener in the now-suppressed 'The Bridge at Andau'), but apparently her editors or agents didn't give her any direction. And shame on them; mustn't do that to a writer preparing a first book. The result is a heap of workmanlike prose conveying mild bewilderment and boredom.
Rating: 5
Summary: Insight on German psyche
Comment: The topic of what the Stasi did to the public of East Germany has largely been ignored by the majority of Germans-east and west. Like the people who participated in the Holocaust, these people have remained silent as to the horrors created by them. Anna Funder cleverly reports on this cultural attitude while focusing on several East Germans who were either part of the horror apparatus or victims of it.
Funder's approach is journalistic, in that she finds the necessary people and asks the difficult questions, yet her style is more like a diary which adds atmosphere. Real people like the Black channel's Klaus Von Schnee... (the Rush Limbaugh of the GDR) and how they think is insightful. One sees the corruption of a mind myopically dedicated to the destruction of anything related to Western culture. Here the party line of evil is laid bare for examination. It makes you realize that the words of Anne Frank are those of a child.
The diarist approach enables Funder to shed light on the smallest details of East German life. The detailed descriptions of Funder's rented East Berlin apartment, paints the emotional impact of a life stricken from possible ambition. The most memorable description in this vein revolved around linoleum. The apartment floors had five shades of ecru with different embossed graining which underlied the functionality of each space. Pure functionalist pragmatism. So amazingly awful, yet surprisingly reminiscent of my first NYC apartment.
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Title: Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police by John O. Koehler ISBN: 0813337445 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic 1945-1990, The by Mike Dennis, J.M. Dennis ISBN: 0582245621 Publisher: Pearson Longman Pub. Date: 13 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany by Joel Agee ISBN: 0226010503 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The File: A Personal History by Timothy Garton Ash, Timothy Garton Ash ISBN: 0679777857 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman ISBN: 0393051447 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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