Anna Funder
Anna Funder (born 1966) is an Australian author. She is the author of ''Stasiland'' and '' All That I Am'' and the novella ''The Girl With the Dogs''.
Life
Funder went to primary school in Melbourne and Paris; she attended Star of the Sea Coll ...
's first fictional work, published in 2011. It follows characters affected by the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
regime in pre-war Germany and Britain.
Publication
The book was first published in 2011 by
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Hans Wesemann, while visiting her cousin Dora in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
in 1923. Together they participate in left wing activism. Ten years later, as
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
Dora Fabian Dora Fabian (née Heinemann; 1901– 31 March or 1 April 1935) was a German socialist and anti-Nazi activist.
She was the daughter of Else Levy Heinemann and Hugo Heinemann, a socialist lawyer who defended trade unionists and political activists i ...
and her lover, playwright
Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller (1 December 1893 – 22 May 1939) was a German author, playwright, left-wing politician and revolutionary, known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, ...
, are forced to flee to
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
. In exile in London, always in danger of being deported by the British Government, they dedicate themselves to making the world realise how dangerous Hitler really is. The storytelling shifts from the point of view of Toller shortly before his suicide in New York in 1939, and the sole survivor Ruth in Sydney in 2001.
All of the characters in ''All That I Am'' are real people; however Funder has reconstructed their stories, as a lot of the memories and moments that compel the story cannot be verified. In her notes Funder writes: "I have made connections and suppositions, for that I take full responsibility."
Characters
* Ruth Becker - One of two storytellers, begins as a young woman in Germany and falls in love with Hans Wesemann, but recollects events from her home in Sydney in 2001.
* Hans Wesemann - Journalist and satirist who finds himself lost in translation when exiled to London.
*
Dora Fabian Dora Fabian (née Heinemann; 1901– 31 March or 1 April 1935) was a German socialist and anti-Nazi activist.
She was the daughter of Else Levy Heinemann and Hugo Heinemann, a socialist lawyer who defended trade unionists and political activists i ...
- Forceful and passionate cousin of Ruth.
*
Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller (1 December 1893 – 22 May 1939) was a German author, playwright, left-wing politician and revolutionary, known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, ...
- A poet and reluctant activist prone to long bouts of severe depression. He is also recollecting past events, but it is before his suicide in New York in 1939.
* Berthold Jacob - A journalist who suffers under the Nazi regime, and helps engineer the escape of the other four.
Critical reception
''All That I Am'' garnered generally positive reviews and many awards. David Marr said: "In language of admirable simplicity she explores the shadowy ambiguities lurking in her characters – ambiguities that have always fascinated her: the good that comes with bad and the bad with good".
ABC Radio Perth
ABC Radio Perth (call sign: 6WF) is the on-air identifier of a radio station located in Perth, Western Australia, operated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and broadcasting at 720 kHz AM. It is the flagship ABC Local Radio station ...
critic Miriam Borthwick said "It is a riveting portrayal of real people's lives lived in terrible circumstances". ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', while generally praising the work, was conscious and somewhat wary of the literary reconstruction of real events, concluding that it was "a studiously researched fantasy about the past that stages an almost self-annihilating debate about reconstruction".
Australian Book Industry Award
The Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) are publishers' and literary awards held by the Australian Publishers Association annually in Sydney "to celebrate the achievements of authors and publishers in bringing Australian books to readers". ...
(ABIA), Book of the Year
*2012
Barbara Jefferis Award
The Barbara Jefferis Award is an Australian literary award prize. The award was created in 2007 after being endowed by John Hinde upon his death to commemorate his late wife, author Barbara Jefferis. It is funded by his $1 million bequest. Origi ...
*2012 Australian Independent Booksellers Indie Book Award for Literary Fiction