All that I Am by Anna Funder, Hamish Hamilton, $32.95.
Anna Funder’s long-awaited first novel has one of the great opening lines: When Hitler came to power I was in the bath.
The place, Berlin; the year, 1933, and this homely image is a reminder of how mighty historical events can twist and destroy individual lives.
The bather is one of a small core of committed activists — based on real people – who see what is coming and determine to resist, first in Germany itself and later, as impoverished exiles agitating against Nazism (illegally) in London.
They marry and love each other, share passions and jealousy, but the personal is, in such extreme circumstances, always political and there is no escaping the consequences of their courage, and in some cases betrayals.
They are old when we meet them, or exist only in journals and letters, but Funder calls us back to when they were young and fierce and charts their getting of wisdom, at great cost, over 80 years of the last turbulent century.
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