AustLit

'This article contends that literary journalism, like its component parts of literature and journalism, is a construct based on different culturally and socially accepted conventions. German and Australian views of literary journalism are shaped by different histories and expectations, as the reaction to Anna Funder’s book Stasiland in Germany demonstrates. It examines the German cultural context at the time of Stasiland’s publication, and argues that the different approaches to privacy and to literary journalism in Australia and Germany resulted in vastly different receptions for the book.