The extraordinary true story of the Stasi-s poetry club: Stasiland and The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society.
-Engrossing.- Observer
-Remarkable.- The Times
-Magnificent.- Phillipe Sands
-Gripping.- Literary Review
-A history so outlandish and unlikely that you feel it must be true . . . [A] grippingly well-written book.- Anthony Quinn, Observer Book of the Week
In 1982, East Germany-s fearsome secret police - convinced that writers were embedding subversive messages in their work - decided to train their own writers, weaponising poetry in the struggle against the class enemy. Once a month, a group of soldiers and border guards gathered in a heavily guarded military compound in East Berlin for meetings to learn how to write lyrical verse.
Journalist Philip Oltermann spent five years rifling through Sta
