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Stasiland

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Stasiland

By: Anna Funder
Narrated by: Denica Fairman
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Anna Funder’s Samuel Johnson Prize-winning Stasiland is an Australian classic, the definitive account of tyranny and resistance in the former East Germany.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited and East Germany ceased to exist.

Anna Funder’s best-selling Stasiland brings us extraordinary tales of real lives in the former East Germany. She meets Miriam, who tried to escape to West Berlin as a 16-year-old; hears the heartbreaking story of Frau Paul, who was separated from her young baby by the Berlin Wall; and gets drunk with the legendary ‘Mik Jegger’ of the East, once declared by the authorities - to his face - ‘no longer to exist’. And she meets the Stasi men themselves, still proud of their surveillance methods. Funder’s powerful account of that brutal world has become a contemporary classic.

©2002 Anna Funder (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
20th Century Europe Germany Modern Thought-Provoking
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Critic reviews

"Funder is a superb interviewer...she truly excels in the rendering of her sessions with former Stasi employees." (Sunday Times)

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The history is powerful and painful, and brilliantly told, but the actor reading it seems completely disconnected to both the brutal facts of the story and the simple, serious voice which the prose - as I imagine it on the page - conveys. She seems to think it’s a comedy. Exceptionally irritating to listen to.

Excellent book, poor choice of reader.

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Fascinating from a historical standpoint and beautifully written. Can’t recommend highly enough and I want to read more by this writer.

Absolutely brilliant

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This book should absolutely be part of the school curriculum, but they wouldn’t do that because lays bare the true horrors and paranoia of Marxism.

A fascinating glimpse behind the wall

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As a west German I learnt a lot about individual experience of the stasi and how people live with the past

Personal look at the aftermath of east Germany

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Mundane men in mundane offices destroy lives on an industrial scale. Very affecting and very well read.

Administrative Evil Revealed

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