The File: A Personal History, by Timothy Garton Ash (TPB, 1997, $2.50)
In 1978 a young Englishman went to East Berlin to study. He had lied to get in. He had said he was writing his doctoral thesis on Berlin under Hitler, but actually he was there to write about Berlin under communism. The secret police, the Stasi, were suspicious. They started a file on him. Informants were asked to report on him.
Fifteen years later, East and West Berlin are united, and the secret files are made available to him. Ash takes his memories, his diaries, and his Stasi file back to Berlin, to find out who his true friends had been, and to confront those who had informed on him.
This is another of those books I only meant to blog about, but ended up reading to the very end. The answers to his questions are not the black and white ones he, or I, expected. Then I found myself asking, what would I have done if I had been there? The harsh true answer is I don't know. Probably no one does. The lessons of this book linger long after the reading is done.
You can find it on the new non-fiction table, avail. 9/27.
