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All That I Am
 
 

All That I Am [Kindle Edition]

Anna Funder
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)

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Product Description

Review

Anna Funder proved herself a first-rate reporter with Stasiland - now she appears as a compelling novelist in a dark story of German emigres in the 1930s, struggling to warn the indifferent English against the Nazis (Claire Tomalin )

The subtlety of Anna Funder's novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her painstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events...The result is a strong and impressively humane novel (Ruth Scurr TLS )

A superb novel that transcends its setting...This book is a wonder. Do, please, read it (The Spectator )

History, like hope, is not something to be solved, but to be carried. Anna Funder has written an essential novel about how we carry the bricks of history on our backs, and how we continually build new homes from the material of the past. All That I Am is an intimate exploration of human connection and our responsibility to one another. Funder breathes life into Kundera's aperçu that the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting (Colum McCann )

A seamless and powerful tale...the book is far more than "faction"; Funder has successfully transformed the material into a narrative of individual endeavour and survival, that examines universal human themes...Dora and Ruth, especially, convey a sense of truthfulness and decency that transcends their time and should inspire us, even now, to expose injustice and tyranny (Rachel Hore Independent on Sunday )

The strengths of Funder's writing are emotional and imaginative.In what she has to say about love, loss and betrayal there is profound truth (The Times )

Review

Spellbinding ... there are echoes of the best espionage tales Sunday Telegraph A superb novel that transcends its setting. This book is a wonder. Do, please, read it Spectator The strengths of Funder's writing are emotional and imaginative. In what she has to say about love, loss and betrayal there is profound truth The Times Dora is the most attractive fictional heroine in a long time ... a gripping story of love and betrayal New Statesman A seamless and powerful tale ... of individual endeavour and survival that examines universal human themes Independent on Sunday A remarkable story told with clarity and precision Guardian The subtlety of Anna Funder's novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her painstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events ... The result is a strong and impressively humane novel TLS A story of courage and betrayal ... she has captured the atmosphere of what it must have been like to have been at the centre of the left-wing movement in post-war Germany Evening Standard Anna Funder proved herself a first-rate reporter with Stasiland - now she appears as a compelling novelist in a dark story of German emigres in the 1930s, struggling to warn the indifferent English against the Nazis -- Claire Tomalin The subtlety of Anna Funder's novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her painstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events...The result is a strong and impressively humane novel -- Ruth Scurr TLS

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 579 KB
  • Print Length: 396 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0670920398
  • Publisher: Penguin (15 Sep 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0670920428
  • ISBN-13: 978-0670920426
  • ASIN: B005HHSXYG
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Not Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #12,692 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars `When Hitler came to power I was in the bath.' 7 Jun 2012
By J. Cameron-Smith TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
As the novel opens, Ruth Becker is an elderly woman, living in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Ruth has not forgotten the past, but she prefers to keep it at a distance. But Ruth's defences crumble when she receives Ernst Toller's papers from the past. From a shared past: Toller's perspective is looking back from 1939, her own perspective adds an additional 60 years of life to that view.

`I am a vessel of memory in a world of forgetting.'

Ruth Becker and Ernst Toller are the narrators in Ms Funder's novel. Ernst Toller, a playwright, is looking back at events from his exile in New York just after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Ruth Becker moves between her present life in Sydney and events in the years between World War I and II.
This novel revolves around the events in the lives of five people: Ernst Toller, Ruth Becker, her cousin Dora Fabian, Ruth's husband Hans Wesemann, and the journalist Berthold Jacob. When Ernst Toller is imprisoned, in the 1920s, for his role in Munich's brief revolution, the others campaign for his release. Toller is released in 1925, and he and Dora become lovers. While in prison, Toller has written four plays about the human price of war: he is both a leading figure in German theatre and a leading European anti-fascist. Toller was in Switzerland during the week when Hitler became chancellor in 1933.

For Ruth, Dora, Berthold and Hans, the decision to leave Germany is made immediately after the infamous burning of the Reichstag. Dora bravely hides Ernst's papers, and joins him in Switzerland, before later moving to London. Hans and Ruth leave for London, while Berthhold moves to Strasbourg.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Might have worked better as non-fiction. 30 Nov 2011
By Jill Meyer TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
Anna Funder's debut novel, "All That I Am" was a difficult book to review. A good novel should have either a strong plot or strong characters. Funder's novel has neither. I wasn't invested in either plot or characters until the end of the book, where the plot picked up and the characters became clearer.

Told by two voices, "Ruth" and "Toller", the book is set in many places and time periods. London in 1933, Germany during and after WW1, Sydney in the recent past, and New York City in 1939 are a few of the settings. There were four main characters, Dora and her cousin Ruth, and Ernst Toller and Hans Wesemann, both WW1 veterans, writers, and, along with the women, members of an organisation of left-leaning German refugees determined to get the word out about what was happening in Nazi Germany. However, as danger of Nazi reprisals grow, allegiances are torn apart. Betrayals abound but Funder actually ties things up nicely in the end.

After finishing the book, I read the afterword where Funder tells the reader that the story is based on actual historic figures and their work. And here's where I think Anna Funder may have made a mistake in her writing. The story of Dora Fabian, Ruth Blatt, Ernst Toller, Hans Wesemann would have made excellent, straight-forward telling as a work of non-fiction. As fiction, Funder has to invent and imagine scenes and personalities, and I didn't feel her writing was as strong as it should be. The end of the book was stronger because she was working with solid fact.

It's presumptuous and rather rude for an amateur reviewer to take an author to task. I don't like writing a review like that, but I did finish Funder's novel wanting to know more about the characters' actual lives.
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36 of 39 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful novel telling of inspirational bravery 27 Aug 2011
By L. H. Healy TOP 100 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
This is the first novel from Anna Funder, who wrote the excellent non-fiction book `Stasiland', about numerous people's experiences at the hands of the secret police in the GDR, the former East Germany. This novel also takes Germany as it's primary setting, here though the time is the 1920s and 1930s, the days of hyperinflation, the Weimar Republic, the reaction in Germany to having lost WWI and the demands of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany, followed by the rise to power of the National Socialists led by Hitler. This period interests me very much as I studied modern German history at school and University. I have read a large number of excellent novels recently taking one or both World Wars as a backdrop, yet in dealing with refugees from Germany fighting against the new regime, this one covers very well something I knew very little about and brings a whole different aspect to light; one that I feel should be more widely known, and I hope it will become so through this inspiring novel's many future readers.

Ruth Becker, her cousin Dora Fabian, left-wing playwright Ernst Toller, Hans Wesemann who Ruth marries, Mathilde Wurm and other characters play leading roles in a determined struggle to keep Germany from falling into Hitler's control. When Hitler does gain power though, they flee and yet they strive to continue their resistance efforts, however much this endangers them, from their new locations, London being the main one. Whilst trying to maintain their determined struggle, they have to cope with trying to settle as refugees into another country with a different language, to learn who they can and cannot trust both within the establishment and those close around them, all the while fearing that betrayal and enemies may be concealed everywhere.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars Really interesting read
It took me a little while to get into each of the characters, but after that I really loved it. Such an interesting historical novel. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Anna Lasic
4.0 out of 5 stars A one sentence book review of All that I am
An entertaining, if somewhat obvious plot, with good characters about how the Nazi party took over Germany and criminalised some of her own subjects.
Published 1 month ago by Adam
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
When I finished this book I had to start again and was sorry to stop reading....
Beautifully done and very moving, and I liked the touches of humour too, making their... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Button Martin
1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money or more importantly your time on this book
Don't waste your money or more importantly your time on this book. At first sight it looks interesting and tempting because the author has chosen a fascinating subject - Germans... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Wainwright Walker
5.0 out of 5 stars All That I Am
Wonderful. A truly beautifully written novel. The scope of narrative arc is demanding, even as it is pleasing. Read more
Published 3 months ago by A. Lauppe-Dunbar
5.0 out of 5 stars A humbling insight into Germanys history
I only had to read the "blurb" on the inside cover to know that this was a book worth reading. I've read a lot of books about the war, but this was the first one I had encountered... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Princess Mononoke
5.0 out of 5 stars eye opener
I had absolutely no idea that all this went on between the wars. I couldn't put this book down. For some reason i was also surprised at the level of education these women... Read more
Published 4 months ago by ANG
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book
This was a book for discussion. The structure of the book, the historical setting, the retrospective narrative. Read more
Published 4 months ago by H M Marsden
4.0 out of 5 stars I enjoyed this book
I was given this book by my daughter at Christmas because she and I had both enjoyed Staziland.
The book was presented as a novel so I was pulled up short when a deceased... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Mum of 3
2.0 out of 5 stars So much potential; not enough gripping reading
Got up to 58% and then realised if I wasn't pulled in by now it'd never happen. This novel was well researched, well written, had a great feel but ultimately slow and nothing... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Rebecca Berto
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