All That I Am

2013 Longlist

When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight.  United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they flee the country.  Dora, passionate and fearless; her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller; her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth’s husband Hans find refuge in London.  Here they take awe-inspiring risks in order to continue their work in secret.  But England is not the safe-haven they think it is, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart.

Some seventy years later, Ruth is living out her days is Sydney, making an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past, and a part of history that has all but been forgotten.

(From Publisher)

 About the Author

Anna Funder is the author of the international bestseller Stasiland, which won the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize and was published in 20 countries and translated into 16 languages. She is the recipient of numerous awards, and a former DAAD and Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. Anna Funder grew up in Melbourne and Paris and lives in Sydney with her husband and family.

Librarians’ Comments

An eloquent, well researched, well constructed novel and a gripping story.

Anna Funder’s beautifully written first novel and second book, ‘All that I Am’, spans continents and time from 1930s pre-war Britain to Australia at the turn of the 21st century. This finely imagined book describes the courage of anti-Hitler activists and raises moral challenges.