The File: a Personal History

by TimothyGartonAsh (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $9.71

• Used

  Hardcover
  1997

  $5.60

  In 1991, after the Wall came down and the archives of Eastern Europe opened up, Timothy Garton Ash walked into the building that housed the files of the Stasi, the infamous East German secret police and asked if there was a file on him. There was - a thick one. In this work Ash describes what was in the file, and the avenues personal, political and historical, which he was led down by it. The book begins autobiographically, but opens out to show how Ash tracked down and confronted those who once pursued and monitored him. He shows how it is impossible to establish the truth of history and how the way we act depends overwhelmingly upon the circumstances in which we are placed.

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $13.84

  In 1978 Timothy Garton Ash went to live in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later, by then internationally famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe, he returned to look at his Stasi file which bore the code-name 'Romeo'. Compiled by the East German secret police, with the assistance of both professional spies and ordinary people turned informer, it contained a meticulous record of his earlier life in Berlin. In this memoir, he describes rediscovering his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and then confronting those who had informed against him. Moving from document to remembrance, from the offices of Britain's own security service to the living rooms of retired Stasi officers, The File is a personal narrative as gripping, as disquieting, and as morally provocative as any fiction by George Orwell or Graham Greene. And it is all true.