“A brilliant and necessary book about oppression and history. “A brilliant account of the brutal histories of people whose lives were shaped by the Berlin Wall.” - Sunday Times (London)

A gripping account of a city’s search for identity under the unexpected burden of freedom” - Scotland on Sunday “Seduced and repelled by the mythical lost world of Cold War Berlin, Anna Funder reconstructs it by visiting its torture chambers and meeting its citizens. A classic for sure.” - Claire Tomalin, Guardian Books of the Year She found her subject in East Germany, went for it bravely and delivers the goods in a heartbreaking, beautifully written book. “Anna Funder’s Stasiland demonstrates that great, original reporting is still possible. In thetradition of Frederick Taylor’s The Berlin Wall and Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, Funder’s Stasiland is a masterpiece of investigative reporting, written with novelistic vividness and the compelling intensity of a universal, real-life story. Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction: a powerfully moving account of people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi.Īnna Funder delivers a prize-winning and powerfully rendered account of the resistance against East Germany’s communist dictatorship in these harrowing, personal tales of life behind the Iron Curtain-and, especially, of life under the iron fist of the Stasi, East Germany’s brutal state security force. A classic.” - Claire Tomalin, Guardian “Books of the Year”

A heartbreaking, beautifully written book. “ Stasiland demonstrates that great, original reporting is still possible.

Stasiland book review