All That I Am
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. --Sarah Johnson