(Eventually her lover died, mysteriously, in custody.) A couple the author met had nearly lost their sick child, who was at a better hospital in West Berlin her landlady was barely able to acknowledge what turned out to be a history of twisted treatment by the Stasi. Funder befriended several survivors, such as Miriam, who was arrested at 16 in 1968 for anti-authoritarian pranks fearing prison, she attempted to cross the Berlin Wall, served time, and was persecuted for years. The German Democratic Republic’s surveillance apparatus, run by the Stasi (secret police), was more pervasive than elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc many people became informers, while others had their lives ruined for minor infractions. When she was writer-in-residence at the Australia Center in Potsdam, the author became fascinated by the uneasy truce former East Germans kept with their recent Communist past, which was literally all around.
Sydney-based Funder’s impressive debut crisply renders her pursuit of East Berlin’s ghosts.
0 kommentar(er)
