An account of fraught and complex cross-cultural literary exchange between two highly distinct - even uniquely opposed - reading contexts, Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic has resonance for all newly global reckonings of the cultural Cold War. Working from the extraordinary records of the East German publishing and censorship regime, the authors materially track the production and reception of one country’s corpus as envisioned by another. The 90 Australian titles published in the GDR form an alternative canon, revealing a shadowy literary archive that rewrites Australia’s postwar cultural history from behind the iron curtain and illuminates multiple ironies for the GDR as a ‘reading nation’. This book brings together leading German and Australian scholars in the fields of book history, German and Australian cultural history, Australian and postcolonial literatures, and postcolonial and cross-cultural theory, with emerging writers currently navigating between the two cultures.

A high quality, comprehensive and practical resource for the study of literature in the senior years, including a handbook of literary terms in tables. Includes a summary of the main genres, identifies key features and main conventions for the novel, short story, drama, poetry, memoir and film. This highly relevant resource for literary studies is booklisted and classlisted nationally.

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Inspired by the book Stasiland, this work is an attempt to see if some of the state practices that flourished in Communist Eastern Europe might be replicated in modern Ireland. It goes into the question of intelligence agencies, what agencies are active in Ireland, how they harass dissidents, their use of modern technology and their role in secretly supporting paramilitary groups in Ireland and around the world. It includes a lot of first hand testimony of state harassment, and even torture, which is on a par with what happened in countries like East Germany. Finally it concludes with some searching questions about the real government policies being pursued in Ireland.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In Stasiland, winner of the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize, Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany, a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight, and one in fifty East Germans were informing on their countrymen and women. She meets Miriam, who as a sixteen-year-old might have started the Third World War, visits the man who painted the line which became the Berlin Wall and gets drunk with the legendary 'Mik Jegger' of the East, who the authorities once declared - to his face - to 'no longer exist'.

The Berlin Wall, for many people, epitomizes the communist German Democratic Republic, founded in 1949 in the Soviet-occupied zone of post-war Germany; other central features of life in the GDR appear to be under the threat of repression by Soviet tanks and surveillance by the secret security police, the Stasi. But is repression and surveillance really all there is to the GDRs history? How did people come to terms with their situation and make new lives behind the Wall? When the social history of the GDR in the 1960s and 1970s is explored, new patterns become evident. In a period characterised by consumer socialism, international recognition and dtente, a fragile stability emerged. Increased participation in the micro-structures of power, and conformity to the unwritten rules of an increasingly predictable system, suggest accommodation to dominant norms and conceptions. Contributors explore the ways in which lower-level functionaries and people at the grass roots contributed to the formation and transformation of the GDR from industry and agriculture, through popular sport and cultural life, to the passage of generations and varieties of social experience. The volume thus presents a more complex approach to the history of East Germany during its previously under-researched middle decades and sheds new light on the phenomenon of nostalgic memories since unification. And through the framework of the theoretical concept of normalisation, the book situates the history of the GDR within the wider context of post-war western and eastern European history.

This volume is the first to address the culture of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a historical entity, but also to trace the afterlife of East Germany in the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall. An international team of outstanding scholars offers essential and thought-provoking essays, combining a chronological and genre-based overview from the beginning of the GDR in 1949 to the unification in 1990 and beyond, with in-depth analysis of individual works. A final chapter traces the resonance of the GDR in the years since its demise and analyses the fascination it engenders. The volume provides a 'rereading' of East Germany and its legacy as a cultural phenomenon free from the prejudices that prevailed while it existed, offering English translations throughout, a guide to further reading and a chronology.

"A book club gives the opportunity to meet up with friends and wake the brain up a bit with lively and often quite aggressive discussion" Dawn French How do you keep your reading groups discussions lively and focussed? If you want to gain new insight into literature and share your passion with friends this book offers readers guides for 75 of the very best reads - guaranteed to provoke spirited debate! Each of the readers guides includes a summary of the book, a brief author biography, discussion points to spark debate, and a set of titles for further reading that deal with similar themes. A `background' section provides pointers to more material about the book online and as well as further thought-provoking material: Where did the author come from? What made them write the book? How did the context in which they wrote influence them? If you'd like further insight, debate, discussion and analysis to underpin your understanding and enjoyment of reading - then look no further than this guide. New titles in this edition include: The Long Firm, Leper's Companions, By the Sea, The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, Buddha of Suburbia, The Icarus Girl, Black and Blue, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, The Cutting Room, Shadow of the Wind, Giving up the Ghost...and many more!

How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism? In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist countries constructed museums dedicated to chronicling their experiences. Museums of Communism explores the complicated intersection of history, commemoration, and victimization made evident in these museums constructed after 1991. While contributors from a diverse range of fields explore various museums and include nearly 90 photographs, a common denominator emerges: rather than focusing on artifacts and historical documents, these museums often privilege memories and stories. In doing so, the museums shift attention from experiences of guilt or collaboration to narratives of shared victimization under communist rule. As editor Stephen M. Norris demonstrates, these museums are often problematic at best and revisionist at worst. From occupation museums in the Baltic States to memorial museums in Ukraine, former secret police prisons in Romania, and nostalgic museums of everyday life in Russia, the sites considered offer new ways of understanding the challenges of separating memory and myth.