Wednesday, September 28, 2011

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?

The Emigrants by WG Sebald. The things he does with language and memory are fascinating.
* * *

What book do you wish you’d written?

Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. I think it’s magnificent, kaleidoscopic.
* * *

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.
* * *

What novel would you give to a child to introduce them to literature?

King Solomon’s Mines by H Rider Haggard.
Read the complete Q & A.

Anna Funder's Stasiland appears on Steve Kettmann's list of ten of the best books on Germans and Germany.

--Marshal Zeringue