"Imaginative, compassionate and convincing…In her first novel, Funder combines her proven gift for re-creating the past with the fiction writer’s license to reveal emotional truth through artifice."

"A seamless and powerful tale…Funder has successfully transformed the material into a narrative of individual endeavor and survival, which examines universal themes."

"A brilliant narrative…Every part beautifully rendered and balanced…it works as a gripping spy novel…Funder’s prose raises the book to a different level…This book is a wonder."

"A strong and impressively humane novel…the subtlety of Anna Funder’s novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her paintstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events…"

"A remarkable story told with clarity and precision, along with moments of insight and literary grace."

"The strengths of Funder’s writing are emotional and imaginative. In what she has to say about love, loss and betrayal there is profound truth."

"A bravura piece of storytelling-perfectly plotted, exactingly described…Funder has taken the raw material of truth and from it created a novel of real power and beauty."

"Like Hillary Mantel’s brilliant WOLF HALL, Funder’s new book is not just a novel or thriller, and is also far more than mere history."

"History, like hope, is not something to be solved, but to be carried. Anna Funder has written an essential novel about how we carry the bricks of history on our backs…"

"In ALL THAT I AM, Anna Funder delivers a sweeping first novel that covers love and war, friendship and betrayal, and the bonds that define a life. It is a moving and ambitious work."

"Funder writes with grace and conviction about the intrusion of the political on the domestic and the thrill of falling in love over a cause."

A seamless and powerful tale…Funder has successfully transformed the material into a narrative of individual endeavor and survival, which examines universal themes.

A strong and impressively humane novel…the subtlety of Anna Funder’s novel is in the elegance of her precise prose, and in her paintstaking portrait of an ordinary woman swept up in extraordinary events…

[An] enthralling historical novel.

“[An] enthralling historical novel.

Dora is a passionately political woman. She is the thread that holds together her cousin Ruth, journalist Hans Wesseman, and Ernst Toller, a fellow activist and Dora's lover. The quartet flee Germany in the wake of Hitler's rise to power, but they refuse to be silent about the Nazi threat. Shifting back and forth in time through the framing device of Toller's autobiography, this debut novel by the author of Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall is a spiraling account of political activity and love during World War II. The social aspect of the politics, rather than the war, is the author's main focus in following Dora as she pulls Ruth and Toller along with her. VERDICT Inspired by the life of German Jewish activist Ruth Koplowitz, this beautiful tapestry of friendship and loyalty during one of history's darker times will appeal to fans of novels about World War II as well as those who enjoy biographies of figures from that period. [See Prepub Alert, 8/21/11; the author got to know Koplowitz in her later years after she immigrated to Australia.—Ed.]—April Steenburgh, George F. Johnson Memorial Lib., Endwell, NY

Funder follows her critically acclaimed nonfiction debut (Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, 2003) with the novelized account of German activists who opposed Hitler before World War II. The author uses an unnecessary framing device, having two of the dissidents tell their sometimes-overlapping versions of events. In 2001 Australia, as her short-term memory fails along with her health, Ruth Becker remembers back 70 years to her early adulthood in Germany and England. In 1939 Manhattan, Ernst Toller, a world-renowned playwright and human-rights activist, holes up at the Mayflower Hotel where he dictates to his secretary the events that happened six years earlier. Both narrators are historical figures, as are almost all the "characters" in the book, despite a few name changes. Ruth and Ernst's paths cross in the 1920s. Toller, a decorated soldier during World War I, has been imprisoned for his pacifist activism. Among the pacifists and socialists working to gain his release is Ruth's older cousin Dora. While visiting Dora, 18-year-old Ruth falls deeply in love with journalist Hans Wesemann, whose courageous satirical articles make vicious fun of Hitler and his cronies. Ruth and Hans marry. When Toller leaves prison, where he has managed to write his well-loved plays, Dora becomes his secretary and passionate lover. Toller, scarred by his wartime and prison experience, suffers bouts of serious depression. He wants to marry Dora, but she is a committed feminist who refuses to be tied down. Life as an anti-fascist in late 1920s and early '30s Berlin is a heady mix of idealism, passion and drinking. Then the burning of the Reichstag occurs. Dora is arrested briefly, but it is Ernst the authorities want. Soon Ruth and Hans find themselves in London with Dora, Ernst and numerous other Germans trying to raise the alarm about Hitler. Some find adapting to expatriation harder than others, and one becomes a traitor to the cause. The disquieting historical facts entwined by themes of love and betrayal are powerful enough to make up for flat-footed storytelling.