All That I Am A Novel
When eighteen-year-old Ruth Becker visits her cousin Dora in Munich in 1923, she meets the love of her life, the dashing young journalist Hans Wesemann, and eagerly joins in the heady activities of the militant political left in Weimar Germany. All three friends are working to secure the release of prisoner Ernst Toller, a hero of the 1919 revolution, celebrated conscience of the Republic and the wunderkind of German theatre. Ten years later, Ruth and Hans are married and living in Berlin when Hitler comes to power, and their glamorous Weimar life comes abruptly to an end. Ernst is forced by the newly installed Nazi regime to flee the country, and Dora follows him into exile with Hans and Ruth not far behind. The four take refuge in London in 1933, and dedicate themselves to a passionate, dangerous mission: to bring down Hitler, and alert the British government to the very real Nazi threat to which it has remained willfully blind. Based on a true story, Anna Funder’s novel brings to light new—and very early—heroes of the resistance. All That I Am is their heartbreaking story—a very special novel with an uncommon depth of humanity and wisdom, a searing and intimate portrait of courage and its price, of desire and ambition, and of the devastating consequences when they are thwarted.