All That I Am

Ruth Wesemann is not alone in Berlin, along with her cousin Dora, husband Hans and Ernest Toller she is part of a group of political activists and writers who oppose Hitler. 'When Hitler came to power I was in the bath', it is 1933 and Ruth observes the drift to totalitarianism and war. Anna Funder movingly sketches the entwined strands of the personal and political within the group, as they become increasingly isolated from the Germany that is willing to be obedient to Hitler. Founded on historical fact, the character of Ruth is based on a friend of the author while Ernst Toller was a historical figure, their parallel stories re-imagines the history of the 1930's moving from Weimar Germany to the bleak London inhabited by the exiles.

Anna Funder finds authentic voices for characters who could have been overwhelmed as history rolls over them, drawing out the intensity of their political commitment and their dislocation as they are driven from Germany to London: 'by the magic of exile, whole categories of my identity were obliterated.'

It is an achievement to have created such an authentic atmosphere of moral ambiguity and defiant idealism, such as you find in a Joseph Roth novel, while answering the question asked by her fictional Toller: 'Will the world forget we tried so hard to save it?'