THE BOOK FAIR

 All That I Am

Based on the real lives of German émigrés, the author weaves a plot filled with politics, love, deceit and betrayal.  The novel centers on the lives of Dora Fabian, Ruth Blatt, Hans Wesemann, Berthold Jacob, and playwright, Ernst Toller, who were Socialists and anti-Nazi activists during the 1920’s and 1930’s.  The deep love of their democratic state that fell to Nazis drove them to danger and heroism.  Funder colors the relationships of the Activists as she describes in amazing detail, the historical events under which they lived.

The novel oscillates between Toller and Ruth, who describe their relationship with Dora, the heroine.  One must read carefully for Funder moves in and out of past and present with a slippery ease.  The author affords vivid detail of the rise of Hitler and his Nazi Party, and the regime’s terrible wrath to any opposition in Germany or elsewhere.  Both Toller and Fabian were imprisoned, though at different times, before their exiles from Germany. 

Hitler’s desire for acceptance by Western governments both helped and hindered the Socialist group.  After their arrival in England, the tightly knit group of five devoted their lives to a single cause:  the destruction of Hitler by exposing his coup, as in the burning of the Reichstag, and the horrific Nazi policies, as in the Night of the Long Knives.

The émigrés attempts to foil Hitler, unfortunately for so many tens of millions, fell short of success, perhaps because the West despised the communists as much as the West detested the Nazis.  Interesting, well researched and well written, the novel sheds light on the largely forgotten period.