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Episode 2

Ruth remembers the heady early days when she fell first under her cousin Dora's spell. Readers include Sara Kestelman.

Anna Funder shot to fame when her first book, 'Stasiland', about the secret police in East Germany, won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2004. Now she has taken a true story and written a gripping novel that reveals what happened to the German Left as the Reich took over in the early nineteen-thirties. In a story of fear and fortitude, enormous bravery and terrible betrayal, she reveals not only the lengths the Gestapo went to, to drive the socialists out and to pursue them across Europe, but also the sacrifices made by the 茅migr茅s who wanted to tell the truth about what was happening in their homeland.

Anna Funder was inspired by the true story of her friend, Ruth Blatt, and by those of Dora Fabian, Ernst Toller and Hans Wesemann. She has woven history into a story of passion for a cause, for the truth and for life.

Today: Ruth remembers the heady early days when she fell first under her cousin, Dora's, spell, and then met the charismatic Toller and the handsome Hans Wesemann, and love and the cause of the left became intertwined.

Hattie Morahan, Sara Kestelman and Samuel West read All That I Am by Anna Funder.
It was abridged by Sally Marmion
The producer is Di Speirs.

15 minutes

Last on

Wed 12 Oct 2016 02:00

Broadcasts

  • Tue 25 Oct 2011 22:45
  • Tue 11 Oct 2016 14:00
  • Wed 12 Oct 2016 02:00

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