Stasiland

I have heard Anna Funder be interviewed a few times and so have been wanting to read Stasiland for some time, and this month it came up in my Once Were Wallabies book club as our non-fiction pick. In a nutshell, I found the stories within its pages very compelling.

Stasiland tells the stories of people who lived in East Germany during the time of Communism, i.e. before the Wall fell. The Stasi were, essentially, the East German spies who would hire informers, monitor the public, and essentially stop any dissidents or people trying to escape. I was only ten years old when the Berlin Wall fell, and although I knew it was something significant, I obviously didn't understand the magnitude of the event, and I certainly didn't comprehend how the German people behind that wall lived, nor how it even came to be there. I know, completely ignorant of me, but in school our European History studies stopped at World War II, and it's only now in my adult life that I've taken more of an interest in world affairs.

I believe this was Anna Funder's first book, and for me, it shows, as I struggled with the tense she chose for the book and didn't think it was particularly well written. What she does well, though, is explore East Germany from a number of different angles. Not only does she speak with people who lived under the Stasi and who had their lives drastically changed by them, but she also seeks out some ex-Stasi workers and tells their stories too. I also loved the analysis at the end of the book, where some Germans speak about how some things were actually better before the Wall fell. Having this 'bigger picture' to the events is what made this book so compelling.

Stasiland by Anna Funder - 3.5 out of 5 stars!

Stasiland by Anna Funder