STASILAND.

• Author: Harrigan, Fiona
• Position: BOOK

When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the secrets of East Germany began to trickle into the West. Key among them were the horrors perpetrated by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) Ministry for State Security, known as the Stasi, which kept the nation under a punitive eye and helped the socialist regime cling to power.

Australian author Anna Funder's Stasiland was published in 2002, more than a decade after the GDR ceased to exist. But the story she told involved a nation still recovering from a government that terrorized its citizens--and convinced them to terrorize each other.

The Stasi relied on 97,000 employees and over 173,000 civilian informers to maintain its inescapable surveillance network--possibly one informer for every 6.5 citizens, if part-time collaborators are included. There were many incentives to participate in this system. Dissidents were barred from jobs, imprisoned, and tortured.

Stasiland deftly explores the East German surveillance system...