Their past was Over There, and there was no going back. (The German Democratic Republic was the only Eastern Bloc country that had the option, in addition to “liquidation” and imprisonment, of ridding itself of dissenters by exiling them to a Western neighbour.) In the winter of 1987 I sat with my friends in cafes in Kreuzberg, aware that the past they spoke of, a past containing ex-lovers, parents and even children, still existed, just over the monstrous, outlandish Berlin Wall at the end of the street.

As with most things of this nature, I was blind to them until they manifested in the work.Īt 20, I had been an exchange student at the Free University in West Berlin, where I’d fallen in with artists and writers a generation older than me, who had been kicked out of East Germany. The beginnings of the book were personal, and lay way back in my past. Now I see that I was so in awe of the main characters that nothing could get through to me. I believe I felt, with perverse beginner’s luxury, that I hadn’t had my share of rejection and probably had it coming. But in Germany it was rejected by 23 publishers. Stasiland was published in 2002 in Australia, and later around the world – ultimately in 25 countries.

Or it might be the kind that underpins a life, like those of the Stasi men. This is the kind of mistake that might underpin a project, like Stasiland. Sometimes a mistake can be so big that it is invisible to you. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the author of ‘Stasiland’ reveals the ongoing power of the former East German regime, not just in politics and business but also in shaping perceptions of victimhood in unified Germany

Stasiland book review