- Mass Market Paperback: 381 pages
- Publisher: 10/18 (Oct 2009)
- Language French
- ISBN-10: 2264048700
- ISBN-13: 978-2264048707
- Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 11 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 596,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
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Product Description
Review
"An appealing blend of investigative and reflective reporting, with the narrative drive of powerful human-interest stories. . . . There is no denying Funder's journalistic talents."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Travel Books of the Year, Sunday Times
‘A journey into the bizarre, scary, secret history of the former East Germany that is both relevant and riveting’
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
65 of 72 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The former GDR is perhaps still to close to be history, and there doesn't seem to be many books out there on the subject. Anna Funder's "Stasiland" fills that gap, and does so beautifully. She evokes a lost country, where the grotesquely overfed intelligence service had spilled out into all areas of society. In the end, Stasi controlled - and in many cases ruined - the lives of just about everyone in the GDR.
The first chapter paints a brilliant (and rather funny!) picture of the dark absurdity of a dictatorship. It is amazing how bogged down in detail, how ridiculously self-important it became. The fake moustaches, the cameras hidden in flowery granny handbags seem to come straight of "The Avengers". But soon, the tone turns sombre, as we begin to grasp how this "rule of Marxisten-Senilisten" drained joy and choice out of people's life. I had to keep reminding myself that this is fact, not fiction, as the drama and poignancy builds like a novel.
The whole account is deeply personal. Funder alternates the analysis of her investigations with descriptions of her own film noir-ish life in Berliner pubs and stripped apartments. It appears that she combines her exploratory drive with great poetry and a real knack for story-telling: her language is always lyrical and atmospheric, creating a real sense of time and place. Bridging the gap between story-telling and journalism, Anna Funder has written a unique and beautiful book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Some of the reviews written above complain or find fault with Ms. Funders interjections or opinions during the course of her conversations with the people she meets yet I believe this adds very much to the charm and integrity of her account. She is reacting to the stories of people who lived under a regime that would have seemed incomprehensible to a girl born on the other side of the world (Australia, 1966) when the Wall had already been in existence for five years. It could have been something happening on another planet. It is significant, I think, that Ms. Funders never actually saw the Wall. It was gone by the time she got to Berlin. But the legacy of the Wall lived on in the damage it had done to the people imprisoned behind it and this is what her book is about. It is not a scholarly work with footnotes, nor is it a series of interviews conducted in English with an (unacknowledged) interpreter doing the donkey work which is what we have come to expect from our television superstars. This is not Gitta Sereny interviewing concentration camp commanders, nor even Hannah Arendt commenting on the 'banality of evil' as she witnesses the trial of Adolf Eichmann. No, this is a very different thing altogether. This is a young Australian woman of Danish descent (she thought that was close enough to "pass" as German, but it turned out it wasn't) who decided to study German as a kid to the bewilderment of her family. She liked the weird agglomerations of the language that made nuanced new words. She goes to Berlin and starts to meet people who lived under the DDR regime, already 7 years defunct by the time she gets there. That's where the stories come from. So she's judgemental. Why not? She can hardly believe what she is hearing. This is late 20th Century Alice in Stasiland -- just as weird as the Lewis Carroll original: there is no unemployment even if you are unemployed, this is a multi-party state even if there is only one party, the Wall protects you even if we shoot you for trying to leave. Something is seriously askew here. Objectivity in these circumstances would have led to the following "balanced" report from Berlin in former times: 'Obviously the Jews must be doing something deeply subversive, otherwise Herr Hitler wouldn't be so angry with them'. Indubitably. In fact, I find several parallels with this occasionally poetic (very rarely over-written) account of Ms. Funder with that of the "Berlin Stories" of Christopher Isherwood written from the same city during the early 1930s when the Nazis were just coming to power. In the same way as Isherwood she captures the feeling and mood of the city, the swampy setting, the wide grey streets, the bustling trams, the cavernous apartments with brown linoleum, the trees, the parks, the drunks, the feverish gaiety, the underlying gloom. Ms. Funder gives us a personal (and why not?) snapshot of a certain time and place just as Isherwood -- 'I am a camera' -- did for another period in the history of this city.
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I strongly recommend this book - not only to those, like me, who visited the happily defunct GDR, but everybody who would like to learn about how people react and act in a dictatorship. Why would people inform on their lovers, parents or neighbours? How could others think they would succeed in escaping?
The book is informative, exciting, moving and above all poetic. It leaves you thinking, and most of all, I'm left pondering how I would have behaved in a system such as the one in GDR. Hopefully, I'll never know.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Unreliable history
Some might argue that as Anna Funder lays no claim to writing anything approaching a systematic history of the Stasi, still less of the GDR, she is under no obligation to provide a... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Rainborough
Excellent account of the times
A really interesting book on how things were before the wall came down,
informative and deffinteley educating! Something that is easy to read but rich
in information.
informative and deffinteley educating! Something that is easy to read but rich
in information.
Published 4 months ago by Veliota Drosou
Too much of Anna
I too saw a number of films about the GDR and it is tempting with the present problems of modern capitalism to idealise that era. Read more
Published 6 months ago by I. Pozsonyi
Many voices, many sides, and a great book.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book as a follow-up to one of the more historical tomes available. I read this after finishing Frederick Taylor's utterly compelling The Berlin... Read more
Published 6 months ago by SL-N/1973
Compelling Theme, Mediocre Delivery
I came to this much-hyped book with high expectations. The stories of East Germans who lived the wrong side of the Berlin Wall provide a chilling reminder of how the Stasi... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Antenna
stasiland review
book was ordered and came in a reasonable time maybe the book could have had a few more maps or pictures detailing areas relating to a particular story which would have given a... Read more
Published 6 months ago by sean martin
this book also speaks about modern germany
Excellent book , what an amazing depiction of peoples experiences in GDR . I would recommend this book to every one , to get a picture of life and the choices people had to make... Read more
Published 7 months ago by A. Browne
Fascinating read
This book describes how the old totalitarian regime of the "German Democratic Republic" (surely an oxymoron if there was ever one? Read more
Published 7 months ago by Nottmmike
1984 revisited
We have a lot to be thankful for - living in our civilised euro bubble - away from the horrors of Burma, North Korea, China, Syria, Bahrein, Saudi Arabia , Yemen, Somalia, Zimbabwe... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Gargantua Pantaloon
The next time someone says to you "Well if you've nothing to...
Written in a semi-novelistic manner, Stasiland is an impressionistic, personal investigation of the activities of the Stasi (the notorious secret police of the old East German... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Mr. Joel C. A. Cooney
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