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Book Summary and Reviews of All That I Am by Anna Funder

All That I Am by Anna Funder

All That I Am

A Novel

by Anna Funder

  • Critics' Consensus (0):
  • Published:
  • Feb 2012, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Anna Funder, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and author of Stasiland, offers a thrilling tale and powerful love story that tells the heroic and tragic true story of the German resistance in World War II in All That I Am.

Award-winning author Anna Funder delivers an affecting and beautifully evocative debut novel about a group of young German exiles who risk their lives to awaken the world to the terrifying threat of Hitler and Nazi Germany. Based on real-life events and people, All That I Am brings to light the heroic, tragic, and true story of a small group of left-wing German social activists who mounted a fierce and cunning resistance from their perilous London exile, in a novel that fans of Suite Francaise, The Piano Teacher, and Atonement will find irresistible and unforgettable.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. All That I Am deals with a part of history that has slipped into obscurity for many of us. Does the novel suggest that we've failed to learn the lessons of this history?
  2. The author has invented a plot using elements which are real, but it points to different causes for certain events, particularly those in the room in Bloomsbury, from which the real-life inquest drew another conclusion. To what extent to you think that Funder has written All That I Am as a kind of detective work? Can it be argued that the work of a novelist and a detective are similar, both having to imagine the motivations of others.
  3. Consider the ways in which the novel addresses the act of seeing – of looking, engaging, perceiving, misapprehending...
Please be aware that this discussion may contain spoilers!

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"The disquieting historical facts entwined by themes of love and betrayal are powerful enough to make up for flat-footed storytelling." - Kirkus Reviews

"[Funder] 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." - Publishers Weekly

"A literary work as suspenseful as the best thrillers, Funder's extraordinary first novel is an unflinching portrait of courage in devastating circumstances." - Library Journal

"An intimate exploration of human connection and our responsibility to one another." - Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin

This information about All That I Am was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Anna Funder Author Biography

Photo: © Courtesy of the author

Anna Funder is the author of Stasiland and All That I Am, and the novella The Girl with the Dogs. Stasiland, hailed as a "classic," tells true stories of ordinary people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of others who worked for the Stasi. In 2004 Stasiland won the UK's premier award for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize, and was a finalist for many other awards. Anna's novel All That I Am is an homage to four German anti-Hitler activists living bravely but precariously in exile in London in the 1930s. All That I Am won many literary awards including Australia's most prestigious, the Miles Franklin Prize, and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. It spent over a year on the bestseller lists, was...

... Full Biography
Link to Anna Funder's Website

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