Staziland

£7.99

Anna Funder’s “Staziland” is a spirited & rigorous historical account of life in East Germany, told with a passion and skill that makes it read almost like a novel. Funder examines the nature of the German Democratic Republic’s regime, its grip over its citizens and the social history of a country that vanished. Moreover it is an account of how shared histories are glazed over, rewritten or forgotten.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight, and one in 50 East Germans were informing on their countrymen and women, there are a thousand stories just waiting to get out. Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany - she meets Miriam, who as a 16-year-old might have started World War III, visits the man who painted the line which became the Berlin Wall and gets drunk with the legendary "Mik Jegger" of the East, once declared by the authorities to his face to "no longer to exist".