An historical 'flash-back' novel based on the life of the author's friend. It recounts the challenges faced by German emigres living abroad during the rise of Hitler and National Socialism in the 1930s, starting in Germany and then London, Czechoslovakia, Paris and New York. Written from the point of view of two characters with alternating chapters and different time scales, it is full of fascinating detail. Both contemporary lives are also recounted as they reflect on the past and as such the events and challenges met by those living outside their native land strike strange chords of today's problems. This is a very fine book indeed.
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 must 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 breath-taking risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe-haven they think it to be, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart...
Anna Funder was born in Melbourne in 1966. She has worked as an international lawyer and a radio and television producer. In 1997 she was writer-in-residence at the Australia Centre in Potsdam. She lives in Sydney with her husband and baby.
