A review by serendipitysbooks
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder

dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

 Stasiland is an investigation into life in East Germany and the power of the Stasi. It’s based on interviews conducted by an Australian writer beginning shortly after reunification. The author is very present in the book and it includes details of how the interviews came to be, her opinions and thoughts, as well as the information gleaned from each interview. In other words it’s not an objective, detached history by a dispassionate almost anonymous author, and it’s style may not be for every reader. I found it to be engagingly written and it is balanced in the sense that it includes interviews with former Stasi officials and informers as well as ordinary citizens whose lives were negatively impacted by Stasi control. I imagine this book may have made quite the splash when it was first released but more than twenty years later very little in here was new to me. If it weren’t for this challenge it’s not a book I would have picked up, since I don’t have a particular interest in the subject matter, but that is hardly the book’s fault. For those looking for a quick and accessible insight into life in the former East Germany this would be a great choice.
 
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