Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall [Paperback]

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.

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.

As a consequence, in order to remain sane, many people withdrew into an 'internal immigration' in order to keep something of themselves from the authorities. The coping mechanisms, and justificiations, employed by the central characters in this book are memorably drawn out by Funder. It is a time of black humour, where the landlady Julia closes her phone conversations to her Italian boyfriend with "Night All" 'to the others listening in', and rock star Klaus shouts to his adoring audience "There are people in this room reporting on us".

'Stasiland' is also an account of how the the central characters have adapted following the collapse of the wall. Unsurprisingly, it is often the watchers rather than the watched who have thrived - as telemarketeers, real estate agents and insurers. They are 'schooled in the art of convincing people to do things against their own self interest'. The case of Herr Bock, who recruited informers in the former GDR and is used post-1989 by West German companies to acquire state assets at bargain basement prices, is partcularly revelatory - and distasteful. It is in this section that the author's intrusion, as an informed commentator, adds to the text:

'Terrific. Here he [Bock] is once getting the trust of his people and selling them cheap'.

This 'Stasiland' at its best: Funder interacting with the interviewee, whilst involving the reader in her thoughts and reactions to the conversation.

However, there are times when her presence is less insightful, obstructing the flow of the narrative. Did we need the account with the tramps (one of them given the moniker 'Professor Mushroom') in the park? Or the accounts of the beautiful women who look at her in the train or at the coffee stall? Worst of all is the scene where the author goes swimming and is disturbed to find that there are no lanes in the pool, no order. People criss-cross and show little consideration for each other. Is this a metaphor for the new capitalist Germany, as Funder appears to be implying? She is surprised that this pool, like almost every other swimming pool in the world, has specific hours for swimming in lanes, for women and children, for 'bathing' etc etc.

'So this is orderly chaos'.

No, it is not. It is the way public swimming pools *work*, attending to the diverse needs of their local communities - be they in Beijing or Blyth.

However, such passages, though highly irritating, arethe exception. Generally, I have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone interested in the social history of the twentieth centurys 'most surveilled' state. In these times of a global War on the Terror and proposals in the UK for a national identity card, it may even become required reading.