ABC Radio Perth critic Miriam Borthwick said 'It is a riveting portrayal of real people's lives lived in terrible circumstances'. David Marr said: 'In language of admirable simplicity she explores the shadowy ambiguities lurking in her characters – ambiguities that have always fascinated her: the good that comes with bad and the bad with good'. Berthold Jacob - A journalist who suffers under the Nazi regime, and helps engineer the escape of the other four.Īll That I Am garnered generally positive reviews and many awards.He is also recollecting past events, but it is before his suicide in New York in 1939. Ernst Toller - A poet and reluctant activist prone to long bouts of severe depression.Dora Fabian - Forceful and passionate cousin of Ruth.

Hans Wesemann - Journalist and satirist who finds himself lost in translation when exiled to London.Ruth Becker - One of two storytellers, begins as a young woman in Germany and falls in love with Hans Wesemann, but recollects events from her home in Sydney in 2001.In her notes Funder writes: 'I have made connections and suppositions, for that I take full responsibility.' Characters The storytelling shifts from the point of view of Toller shortly before his suicide in New York in 1939, and the sole survivor Ruth in Sydney in 2001.Īll of the characters in All That I Am are real people however Funder has reconstructed their stories, as a lot of the memories and moments that compel the story cannot be verified. In exile in London, always in danger of being deported by the British Government, they dedicate themselves to making the world realise how dangerous Hitler really is. Ten years later, as Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, Ruth and Hans, together with Dora Fabian and her lover, playwright Ernst Toller, are forced to flee to London. Together they participate in left wing activism. Plot Ī young Ruth Becker meets and marries a leading journalist, Hans Wesemann, while visiting her cousin Dora in Munich in 1923. The book was first published in 2011 by Penguin Books. It follows characters affected by the Nazi regime in pre-war Germany and Britain. All That I Am is Australian writer Anna Funder's first fictional work, published in 2011.

Anna funder