Stasiland

“Stasiland demonstrates that great, originalreporting is still possible. . . . A heartbreaking, beautifully written book. Aclassic.” —Claire Tomalin, Guardian “Books ofthe Year” AnnaFunder delivers a prize-winning and powerfully rendered account of theresistance against East Germany’s communist dictatorship in these harrowing,personal tales of life behind the Iron Curtain—and, especially, of life underthe iron fist of the Stasi, East Germany’s brutal state security force. In thetradition of Frederick Taylor’s The Berlin Wall andPhilip Gourevitch’s WeWish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, Funder’s Stasiland isa masterpiece of investigative reporting, written with novelistic vividness andthe compelling intensity of a universal, real-life story.

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 in which one in fifty East Germans were informing on their fellow citizens, there are thousands of captivating stories. Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany. She meets Miriam, who as a sixteen-year-old might have started World War III; she visits the man who painted the line that became the Berlin Wall; and she gets drunk with the legendary “Mik Jegger” of the East, once declared by the authorities to his face to “no longer exist.” Each enthralling story depicts what it’s like to live in Berlin as the city knits itself back together—or fails to. This is a history full of emotion, attitude and complexity.

Entdecken Sie 30 Jahre nach dem Mauerfall »Stasiland« neu. In einer Welt totaler Überwachung durch die Stasi erzählt die australische Autorin Anna Funder in ihrem internationalen Bestseller von mutigem Widerstand und der Macht des Gewissens. – Exklusiv mit einem aktuellen Nachwort der Autorin. Als Anna Funder 1987 zum ersten Mal nach Berlin kam, verliebte sie sich in die zweigeteilte Stadt. Nach dem Fall der Mauer kehrt sie zurück und trifft in Ostberlin überall Menschen, die den Mut besaßen, sich der Diktatur zu widersetzen. Sie trifft Miriam, die von Jugend an in Konflikt mit der Stasi lebt, einen alternden Rock-Star, der nach dem System »nicht mehr existierte« sowie einen jungen Stasi-Mitarbeiter, der den Verlauf der Mauer plante. Aber es gibt auch Spione und Stasi-Offiziere, die weiter an die »Firma« glauben. Mutig, offen und unbelastet, in einer perfekten Mischung von Einfühlung und Distanz, erzählt Funder deren spannende Geschichten, die unsere Gegenwart bis heute prägen. »Anna Funder untersucht auf menschlichste und einfühlsamste Weise Lebensgeschichten, die von der Staatssicherheit in Ostdeutschland zerstört wurden.« J. M. Coetzee »Wahre Geschichten aus dem Land hinter der Berliner Mauer – kein anderes Buch hat mich in den letzten Jahren so gepackt. Es ist faszinierend, unterhaltsam, witzig, erschreckend und absolut wichtig.« Tom Hanks

Award-winning author Anna Funder delivers an affecting and beautifully evocative debut novel about a group of young German exiles who risk their lives to awaken the world to the terrifying threat of Hitler and Nazi Germany. Based on real-life events and people, All That I Am brings to light the heroic, tragic, and true story of a small group of left-wing German social activists who mounted a fierce and cunning resistance from their perilous London exile, in a novel that fans of Suite Francaise, The Piano Teacher, and Atonement will find irresistible and unforgettable. “An intimate exploration of human connection and our responsibility to one another.” —Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin

In this gripping narrative, John Koehler details the widespread activities of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or "Stasi." The Stasi, which infiltrated every walk of East German life, suppressed political opposition, and caused the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of citizens, proved to be one of the most powerful secret police and espionage services in the world. Koehler methodically reviews the Stasi's activities within East Germany and overseas, including its programs for internal repression, international espionage, terrorism and terrorist training, art theft, and special operations in Latin America and Africa. Koehler was both Berlin bureau chief of the Associated Press during the height of the Cold War and a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. His insider's account is based on primary sources, such as U.S. intelligence files, Stasi documents made available only to the author, and extensive interviews with victims of political oppression, former Stasi officers, and West German government officials. Drawing from these sources, Koehler recounts tales that rival the most outlandish Hollywood spy thriller and, at the same time, offers the definitive contribution to our understanding of this still largely unwritten aspect of the history of the Cold War and modern Germany.

Stasiland Insight Text Guide has highly visual Character Map with notes on each character and their relationships; in - depth and comprehensive background and context notes; excellent notes on genre, style and structure; a chapter - by - chapter/scene - by - scene analysis; discussion of characters and relationships; highly informative section o...

The real life stories of eight East Germans caught up in the dramatic transition from Communism to Capitalism by the fall of the Berlin Wall - and what they feel about life after the Wall.

‘Fascinating and powerful.’ Sunday Times What do you do with a hundred thousand idle spies? By 1990 the Berlin Wall had fallen and the East German state security service folded. For forty years, they had amassed more than a billion pages in manila files detailing the lives of their citizens. Almost a hundred thousand Stasi employees, many of them experienced officers with access to highly personal information, found themselves unemployed overnight. This is the story of what they did next. Former FBI agent Ralph Hope uses present-day sources and access to Stasi records to track and expose ex-officers working everywhere from the Russian energy sector to the police and even the government department tasked with prosecuting Stasi crimes. He examines why the key players have never been called to account and, in doing so, asks if we have really learned from the past at all. He highlights a man who continued to fight the Stasi for thirty years after the Wall fell, and reveals a truth that many today don’t want spoken. The Grey Men comes as an urgent warning from the past at a time when governments the world over are building an unprecedented network of surveillance over their citizens. Ultimately, this is a book about the present.