This is the first novel by Anna Funder and it is the winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award this year. Her previous work, Stasiland, is a non-fiction book about the former East Germany's ministry of state security which was very well reviewed.
Once again, a few of us found it hard to get into All That I am initially because the story is told from 2 narrators' voices and jumps around in time as well. But once you get to know the characters, you can't help but get involved in this story of their amazing courage and friendship.
There is a very good interview of Anna Funder by Anne Summers during the Sydney Writers' Festival about the background to her writing this novel. Patricia attended this event and found it most enjoyable. Here is the link to the Sydney Writers' Festival website : http://www.swf.org.au/ I would highly recommend you listen to the entire interview as Anna Funder goes on to explain her friendship with Ruth Blatt (on which the character Ruth Becker is based), the incredible research she did for the book and the meaning of the title.
Even though this is a novel about real characters, she didn't want to write it as a non-fiction because she wanted to get inside the heads of these characters and to tell a story about courage and fear, love and betrayal. She has set the telling of the story in the here and now because this story of resistance to tyranny is surprisingly universal and could be happening in China, Burma, Libya etc.
We have rated this book 8 out of 10.
Our next novel is The Happiest Refugee: My Journey From Tragedy To Comedy
by Anh Do and we are meeting on August 28th at Megan's for our discussion.
Then the next novel to be discussed will be Lee's choice The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman and the date is September 27th Thursday.
