Stasi Poetry Circle

This is a new book. Condition: Brand New.

'Engrossing.' -Observer

'Remarkable.' - The Times
'Magnificent.'- Phillipe Sands

'Gripping.'- Literary Review

'A history so outlandish and unlikely that you feel it must be true . . .[A] grippingly well-written book.'- Anthony Quinn, Observer Book of the Week

In 1982, East Germany's fearsome secret police - convinced that writers were embedding subversive messages in their work - decided to train their own writers, weaponising poetry in the struggle against the class enemy. Once a month, a group of soldiers and border guards gathered in a heavily guarded military compound in East Berlin for meetings to learn how to write lyrical verse.

Journalist Philip Oltermann spent five years rifling through Stasi files, dig-ging out lost volumes of poetry and tracking down surviving members of this Red poet's society, to illustrate the little known story in which spies turned poets and poets spies.

Book details and technical specifications

Format: Paperback / softback
ISBN13: 9780571331208
Published: February 2023

Number of pages: 224
Width: 127 mm
Height: 197 mm
Depth: 15 mm

Publisher: Faber & Faber