Search - The File

Ash lived in East Germany on and off in the late 1970s and 1980s, before he was banned from re-entering the country due to unflattering news articles. The Ministry for State Security, (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, commonly known in a creepy acronym as the Stasi), like bureaucrats everywhere, had to justify budget allocations so it spied on anybody even remotely suspicious, such as Ash, who was doing research for an advanced degree in history (on how the Nazi evil took over the culture of Luther, Goethe, Beethoven, Schiller, science, and modernism). When Germany re-united, it opened up 110 miles of Stasi files to anybody who wanted to read them. Ash read his file and went to talk to the acquaintances who informed on him and the Stasi officers that supervised the informers. This book examines the qualities, the human weaknesses, that made one person an informer, another a Stasi officer and others dissidents or voluntary misfits and slackers. And, no, the fault is not because they were Germans nor in their stars . . . human, all too human.

fascinating, disturbing, enraging - is there a file on you somewhere?
If there is a file on you, is it correct to your liking, or is it filled with half truths and half lies, twisted to make you and others around you look less than the 'good citizen' you 'should' be?

This book was an excellent read and brings up questions about our own government and the limits of power that protect us from abuse from those within.

Highly recommended. Book written and published in England by Flamingo.