Everyone seems to have watched the movie "The Lives of Others" - even my dermatologist talked about it as he glanced up and down my legs looking for lurking melanomas - but few would have read Anna Funder's harrowing book "Stasiland".
Reading it was a very personal experience to me as I imagined growing up in East Germany, the most intrusive surveillance state of all times, had it not been for my parents' act of courage when they escaped in 1949. I remember nothing of it as I was only four years old at the time.
Listen to the full audiobook here
I found this 'there but for the grace of God go I' book while browsing at Vinnies yesterday. According to the price sticker on the back, someone had bought it for $24.99 at the Gateway Bookshop in Wagga Wagga.
Thank you, David and Fran Payne, for stocking the book, and thank you to the anonymous buyer who donated it to Vinnies in Batemans Bay.
Thanks to the three of you I now know how thankful I ought to have been to my long-dead parents for their incredible act of courage to escape that brutal system of oppression three-quarters of a century ago.
