INTERVIEW: ANNA FUNDER
‘I think Orwell would have much preferred to be able to express himself as a homosexual man’
Anna Funder is a big shot. Always a clever clogs (she graduated college in Melbourne as dux), she was revered as an international human rights lawyer for the Australian government before her eloquent political essays were so widely published she decided to become a full-time writer.
Her first book, 2004’s, a study of resistance and collusion during Communist-era East Germany, won almost every literary award going and flew onto school reading lists around the world. She followed that with a devastating novel, , based on the true story of a group of young Jewish activists who fled to London during the rise of the Nazis. It too brought her international awards and plaudits. Whether chronicling fact or conjuring fiction, Funder has perfected an affecting marriage of form and tone which gifts great power and
