I picked up this book on a trip to Berlin in June. I had been horribly ill the night before and I spent the day scooting through Berlin, visiting lovely little shops and taking it easy. The title was hilarious, and as it turns out, a completely true story.

This book is so easy to read. The history and people populated throughout, were both interesting and utterly bonkers in turn. The entire apparatus of the GDR utterly unfathomably weird and controlling. The combination of the secret police and a poetry circle, absurdity to the extreme.

What I appreciated in the book was following the characters but ultimately explaining how a poetry circle existed and why it was encouraged. Also demonstrating how ultimately, while the GDR’s official line was all about the worker and the proletariat, elements of privilege snuck in everywhere. I felt that was epitomised by a man named Uwe Berger. While not a party member, he was a very active Stasi informant, who ran the poetry circle. He would make complaints about other poets, his editors, or anyone else to get his way – but he’d do it through his Stasi informant reports. What an absolute prick.

What it also highlighted was the totalitarian control over language. There was even a little political dictionary that would define different words. Those interpretations and those only, were the acceptable party line. Freedom meant adherence to the rules and party line, and nothing else.

Fantastic, easy read. Recommend.