All That I am http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Books/All-That-I-am-Anna-Funder/9780670920426

By Anna Funder

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About the Author

Anna Funder was born in Melbourne in 1966. She has worked as an international lawyer and a radio and television producer. Her previous book, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, won the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize. She lives in Sydney with her husband and family.

Reviews

Morally fervent fiction, inspired by the story of a German-Jewish activist during World War II; from the author of Samuel Johnson Prize winner Stasiland. (LJ 1/12) (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Funder follows the success of Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall with a debut novel "reconstructed from fossil fragments, much as you might draw skin and feathers over an assembly of dinosaur bones, to fully see the beast." Ruth Becker glimpses that beast outside her Berlin apartment in 1933, as her showy journalist husband, Hans, makes mojitos on the day that Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany. The heart of the novel, however, belongs to Ruth's cousin Dora Fabian, leftist agitator, doomed idealist, and soul mate of playwright Ernst Toller. Ruth helps Dora hide Ernst's writings as the Reichstag burns, and she flees with Hans the next day after being questioned about her Communist affiliations. Outside Germany, she works tirelessly for the cause, bringing Nazi preparations for war to the attention of the British. But her relationship with Hans, whose secret activities endanger everyone, crumbles. As the Holocaust begins, Ernst, in New York, relates Dora's role in his life to a typist whose document reaches Ruth in Australia almost 60 years later. By alternating between Ernst and Ruth, Funder leaps through time with alacrity. She adds an integral perspective on a shopworn subject by invoking the lives of Nazi dissidents whose attempts to alert the world to the growing menace were ignored until it was too late. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, the Wylie Agency. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Spellbinding ... there are echoes of the best espionage tales Sunday Telegraph A superb novel that transcends its setting. This book is a wonder. Do, please, read it Spectator The strengths of Funder's writing are emotional and imaginative. In what she has to say about love, loss and betrayal there is profound truth The Times Dora is the most attractive fictional heroine in a long time ... a gripping story of love and betrayal New Statesman A seamless and powerful tale ... of individual endeavour and survival that examines universal human themes Independent on Sunday A remarkable story told with clarity and precision Guardian The subtlety of Anna Funder's novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her painstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events ... The result is a strong and impressively humane novel TLS A story of courage and betrayal ... she has captured the atmosphere of what it must have been like to have been at the centre of the left-wing movement in post-war Germany Evening Standard Anna Funder proved herself a first-rate reporter with Stasiland - now she appears as a compelling novelist in a dark story of German emigres in the 1930s, struggling to warn the indifferent English against the Nazis -- Claire Tomalin The subtlety of Anna Funder's novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her painstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events...The result is a strong and impressively humane novel -- Ruth Scurr TLS