Free (K) Pre-Order: All That I Am by Anna Funder !!

[mitford13]

Had to use the exclamation marks...this was one of my personal top-reads of 2012 - I'm stunned it's available as a free pre-order from HarperCollins (Amazon):

All That I Am

Award-winning author Anna Funder delivers an affecting and beautifully evocative debut novel about a group of young German exiles who risk their lives to awaken the world to the terrifying threat of Hitler and Nazi Germany. Based on real-life events and people, All That I Am brings to light the heroic, tragic, and true story of a small group of left-wing German social activists who mounted a fierce and cunning resistance from their perilous London exile, in a novel that fans of Suite Francaise, The Piano Teacher, and Atonement will find irresistible and unforgettable.

Booklist:
A literary work as suspenseful as the best thrillers, Funder’s extraordinary first novel is an unflinching portrait of courage in devastating circumstances. The tale unfolds through the dual reminiscences of Ruth Becker, an elderly resident of Sydney in 2001, and Ernst Toller, eminent playwright and former leader of the short-lived Bavarian Republic. Both belonged to a group of left-wing German activists who were forced into exile in London after Hitler came to power, and who risked everything to alert the world—especially Britain, whose deliberate blindness grows increasingly infuriating in the novel—to the danger the Nazis posed. Settled into New York’s Mayflower Hotel in 1939, Toller reworks his autobiography to make the woman who was its emotional heart live once again. Dora Fabian was Ruth’s cousin and Toller’s lover, and the passionate intensity that defines her political and personal existence blazes through these pages. The moral dilemmas affecting Funder’s characters, all based on historical figures, are as strongly evoked as the repressive environment they inhabit and are brave enough to stand against.

[Dr. Drib]

Thank you.

This looks like an important novel, so I went ahead and pre-ordered.

This is a totally free ebook, as you mention.



Don

[melmac]

Managed to grab it too, Thanks looks like a great find It's $15.87 in the Aussie store

[caleb72]

Grabbed. Thanks for that.

[maianhvk]

Not free for this area: $10.99.


* I hate stupid geographic restrictions.

[cromag]

Also free at Barnes & Noble.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-...=9780062077585

[HarleyB]

I'm seeing it at $15.97 - how did you get it free in Australia? Or am I too late?

[HarryT]

The reason you're not seeing it free in Australia is that you probably get the British publisher, and it's been available as an eBook for us since September 2011.

[maianhvk]

But Caleb is in Australia too?

[elemenoP]

It says it's based on a true story. Wasn't there a movie about this group? Were they students? I seem to recall watching a movie about this in my German class, so I guess the movie was in German?

EDIT: I don't think this is the same at all. But does anyone remember a German film about a group of resistor-students in Nazi Germany? Now I would like to remember what it was.

[elemenoP]

Also, for those who are impatient: this is a free pre-order at Amazon, but it's free to download now at B&N.

eP

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

EDIT: I don't think this is the same at all. But does anyone remember a German film about a group of resistor-students in Nazi Germany? Now I would like to remember what it was.

Perhaps this?

[elemenoP]

Harry, that is exactly it! Thank you so much!

eP

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

Harry, that is exactly it! Thank you so much!

eP

Very good film. We watched it as a part of my German evening-class a few years ago.

[mitford13]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

It says it's based on a true story. Wasn't there a movie about this group? Were they students? I seem to recall watching a movie about this in my German class, so I guess the movie was in German?

EDIT: I don't think this is the same at all. But does anyone remember a German film about a group of resistor-students in Nazi Germany? Now I would like to remember what it was.

elemenoP,

The main character the book is loosely centered on, Ernst Toller, and his activities took place before Sophie Scholl & the White Rose...the book is more centered on activities/tensions even before the horrors of the war had escalated. His autobiography [I Was a German/Eine Jugend in Deutschland] which is actually his experiences of WWI, is available as an e-book.

From Wiki:
Ernst Toller was born in Samotschin, Province of Posen, Prussia in 1893 into a Jewish family. At the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for military duty, spent thirteen months on the Western Front, and suffered a complete physical and psychological collapse. His first drama, Transformation (Die Wandlung), was to be inspired by his wartime experiences.

Toller was involved in the 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic, along with other leading anarchists – such as B. Traven and Gustav Landauer – and communists. Toller served as President from April 6 to April 12. It has been said that as a playwright, he was not very good at dealing with politics, and his government did little to restore order in Munich. His government members were also not always well-chosen. For instance, the Foreign Affairs Deputy Dr. Franz Lipp(fr) (who had been admitted several times to psychiatric hospitals) informed Vladimir Lenin via cable that the ousted former Minister-President Hoffmann had fled to Bamberg and taken the key to the ministry toilet with him. On Palm Sunday, April 1919, the Communist Party seized power, with Eugen Leviné as their leader.[1] The republic was short-lived and was defeated by right-wing forces. Toller was imprisoned for five years for his part in the revolution serving his sentence in the prisons of Stadelheim, Neuburg, Eichstätt and, from February 1920 until his release, in the fortress of Niederschönenfeld where he spent 149 days in solitary confinement and 24 days on hunger strike.[2]

While imprisoned, he completed work on Transformation, which premiered in Berlin under the direction of Karlheinz Martin in September 1919. At the time of Transformation's hundredth performance, the Bavarian government offered Toller a pardon, which the writer refused out of solidarity with other political prisoners. Toller would go on to write some of his most celebrated works in prison, including the dramas Masses Man (Masse Mensch), The Machine Breakers (Die Maschinenstürmer), Hinkemann, the German (Der deutsche Hinkemann), and many poems.

It would not be until after his release from prison in July 1925 that he would finally see a performance of one of his plays. In 1925, the most famous of his later dramas, Hoppla, We're Alive! (Hoppla, wir Leben!) directed by Erwin Piscator, premiered in Berlin. It tells the story of a revolutionary who is discharged from a mental hospital after eight years to discover that his once-revolutionary comrades have grown complacent and hopelessly compromised within the system they once opposed. In despair, he kills himself.[3]

In 1933, after the Nazi rise to power, he was exiled from Germany. His citizenship was nullified by the Nazi government later that year. He traveled to London and participated as co-director in the Manchester production of his play Rake Out the Fires (Feuer aus den Kesseln) in 1935.

He went on a lecture tour of the United States and Canada in 1936 and 1937, before settling in California, where he worked on screenplays which remained unproduced. Toller moved to New York City in 1936, where he lived with a group of artists and writers in exile, including Klaus Mann, Erika Mann and Therese Giehse.

Suffering from deep depression (his sister and brother had been arrested and sent to concentration camps) and financial woes (he had given all his money to Spanish Civil War refugees), Toller committed suicide by hanging in his hotel room at the Mayflower Hotel on May 22, 1939.[4]