Born: Established: 1966 Melbourne ;
Gender:
Female
Anna Funder went to school in Melbourne and in Paris, and studied at the University of Melbourne and the Free University of Berlin. Fluent in both German and French, Anna Funder has written in her book Stasiland of her experiences in Berlin, both before and after the Wall came down. She was Writer-in-Residence at the Australian Centre in the University of Potsdam in 1997 and has won the Felix Meyer Creative Writing award, the Australian German Association Fellowship and an Arts Victoria literature grant.
She has worked as a documentary film producer for the Australian Broadcasting Commission and as a translator for Deutsche Welle Television Berlin.
'Anna Funder's utterly compelling first novel All That I Am is about the heroic and largely tragic fate of a small group of left-wing German activists who opposed the rise of Hitler. It centres on two real people: the playwright Ernst Toller (famously eulogized by his friend W H Auden), and one of his associates, Ruth Koplowitz. Ruth was also a friend of Toller, and came to live in Sydney after WW2, where Anna got to know her well in later life. Their lives were tied together by the charismatic, passionate Dora - All That I Am vividly, passionately and irresistibly brings back to life their struggles, their hopes, their fears and their fates.'
Source: Penguin News, 6 October 2010
Sighted: 11/10/2010