The File: A Personal History - Couverture rigide

Ash, Timothy Garton

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0002558238 ISBN 13 : 9780002558235

Editeur : HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1997

Synopsis

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.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

"Eloquent, aware and scrupulous . . . a rich and instructive examination of the Cold War past." --The New York Times

In 1978 a romantic young Englishman took up residence in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later Timothy Garton Ash--who was by then famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe--returned. This time he had come to look at a file that bore the code-name "Romeo." The file had been compiled by the Stasi, the East German secret police, with the assistance of dozens of informers. And it contained a meticulous record of Garton Ash's earlier life in Berlin.

In this memoir, Garton Ash describes what it was like to rediscover his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and then to go on to confront those who actually informed against him to the secret police. Moving from document to remembrance, from the offices of British intelligence 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.

"In this painstaking, powerful unmasking of evil, the wretched face of tyranny is revealed." --Philadelphia Inquirer

Biographie de l'auteur

Timothy Garton Ash is a Fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. Celebrated for his essays in The New York Review of Books, he is the author of The Polish Revolution, which won the Somerset Maugham Award; The Uses of Adversity, which won the Prix Européen de l’Essai; In Europe's Name; and The Magic Lantern, his eyewitness account of the Central European revolutions of 1989, which has been translated into fourteen languages. He lives in Oxford with his wife and two sons.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Date d'édition: 1997
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0002558238
• ISBN 13: 9780002558235
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 240
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Silvia Ruiz Crespo; silviaruizcrespo3@icloud.com; a11.cyberbull@gmail.com; ; Calle otamendi; Madrid; Madrid; 28039; Espagne