Anna Funder
Born in 1966, Anna Funder is an Australian writer who grew up in Melbourne. She worked as an international lawyer and in public relations for a German overseas television service in Berlin. Her first book, Stasiland, won the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction in the United Kingdom.
From her Q & A with Anna Metcalfe at the Financial Times:
What book changed your life?Read the complete Q & A.
The Emigrants by WG Sebald. The things he does with language and memory are fascinating.
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What book do you wish you’d written?
Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. I think it’s magnificent, kaleidoscopic.
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Who would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?
Barack Obama. I think he’s charismatic and inspiring, and we would have a lot to talk about.
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What novel would you give to a child to introduce them to literature?
King Solomon’s Mines by H Rider Haggard.
Anna Funder's Stasiland appears on Steve Kettmann's list of ten of the best books on Germans and Germany.
--Marshal Zeringue
