![]() ![]() The book is dedicated to Ruth Blatt, (renamed as Ruth Becker in the novel) and Funder has drawn on Blatt’s life to write this story of a group of idealistic young people who challenged Hitler, ridiculed him in the press until they realised what a serious threat he was, fled to Britain when the repression began and – not without risk – tried to continue their activism from there in the hope of achieving international assistance to save Germany. ![]() Like fire, which can be intensely harmful or benign, Funder’s art in this novel is to use the history of real people – including someone now dead that she personally knew and was obviously fond of – to write, as she has before in the non-fiction Stasiland, about the need for public vigilance to guard against totalitarianism. This is a conversation we’ve had before – about the temptation of art, like fire, to use people as fuel. (She was also a real person but she doesn’t have a Wikipedia page): Fabian was his one-time lover and fellow-activist against Hitler and is the central character in the novel. ![]() Auden(the poet) his reluctance to write about Dora Fabian in his autobiography. Ernst Toller, (the left-wing activist playwright) is discussing with W.H. Anna Funder, as one of her characters in her debut novel All That I Am, makes a cunning observation about authors using people that they know in their writing. ![]()
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