Hers was a female voice issuing from a western world of education, privilege and equality, whose solitude and curiosity and occasional recklessness suggested nonetheless a distinct lack of complacency. The problems of reportage – who is the observer and where does their right to observe come from? – were resolved at a stroke by Funder's narrative persona. In something of the manner of WG Sebald, she took a role in her own narration: she personalised it, and by personalising it gave it an irrevocable moral character. This is a compelling subject, but it was Funder's approach to it that drew admiration. An account of life in the former German Democratic Republic, it sought to delineate individual and national states of being in the wake of the trauma of totalitarianism, and particularly to inquire into the mental state of a society that has suffered an absolute loss of faith in personal morality. A nna Funder's first book, Stasiland, was a work of great originality and interest.
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