Anna Funder travels by train to Leipzig to meet a woman whose husband died in Stasi custody.

A museum worker tells Funder about Miriam Weber, whose husband died under suspicious Stasi circumstances, sparking Funder's quest.

Funder pitches stories from the eastern German perspective to her TV boss, who dismisses them as uninteresting.

Miriam Weber tells Funder how she was arrested at sixteen for distributing protest leaflets against the Communist regime.

Miriam attempts to escape East Germany by scaling the fences of the Berlin Wall at Bornholmer Bridge station.

The Stasi catch Miriam after she triggers a trip wire at the Wall and torture her using sleep deprivation.

A policeman arrives at Miriam's door to inform her that her husband Charlie has died in a Stasi cell.

Funder places a newspaper advertisement seeking interviews with former Stasi officers willing to share their stories.

Funder tours the national Stasi Headquarters at Normannenstrasse and learns about the enormous scale of GDR surveillance.

Funder interviews propaganda TV host Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler, who defiantly defends the Communist regime and dismisses its failures.

Frau Paul tells Funder how the building of the Wall permanently separated her from her infant son who needed western medical care.

Frau Paul refuses a Stasi offer to reunite with her son in exchange for luring a western student helper into a trap.

Herr Bohnsack, a former overseas spy service officer, contacts a news magazine and publicly reveals his Stasi work.

Funder returns to Berlin and reads a letter from Julia, who has moved to San Francisco and is thriving.

On the train from Leipzig, Funder reads a poem Charlie wrote that captures his defiance and suffering under the regime.

Anna Funder travels to Leipzig to meet Miriam Weber, a woman whose husband Charlie died suspiciously while in Stasi custody. Miriam recounts her teenage protest, her daring attempt to escape over the Berlin Wall, and the years of brutal surveillance that followed. Funder begins seeking out former Stasi officers and visits the regime's vast headquarters, building a portrait of a state that controlled every aspect of its citizens' lives. Through Frau Paul's heartbreaking separation from her infant son and Herr Bohnsack's rare act of public confession, Funder assembles a mosaic of resistance and complicity. Years later she returns to Berlin, learning what has become of those whose stories she carried. The book closes with Charlie's defiant poem, offering a quiet act of remembrance against forgetting.

Funder's quest to document East German resistance and the human cost of the Stasi.

A train station restroom attendant tells Funder she was never able to visit a prince's palace because the Wall prevented travel.

Miriam and her friend are placed in solitary confinement for a month after their leaflet protest is uncovered.

During imprisonment, Miriam is physically tortured in ways that leave lasting psychological marks on her behavior decades later.

Miriam is abruptly put on a train and expelled from East Germany without being allowed to say goodbye to friends.

The Stasi frantically shred enormous quantities of files before the popular uprising can reach their headquarters.

Berlin citizens surround the Stasi headquarters in a peaceful protest to halt the mass destruction of surveillance records.

Funder meets former Stasi officer Herr Winz in a Potsdam hotel and finds him unrepentant and nostalgic for socialism.

Herr Winz presents Funder with a copy of The Communist Manifesto at the close of their meeting.

Julia tells Funder how she met her Italian boyfriend at the Leipzig trade fair and began a long-distance romance.

Julia is denied a university place and cannot find work, while an official insists there is no unemployment in the GDR.

Hagen Koch tells Funder how he personally drew the line on the ground where the Berlin Wall would be constructed.

A committee official tells members of the Klaus Renft Combo that their performers' license is revoked and the band no longer exists.

Frau Paul and her husband are tried and sentenced to four years of hard labor for their involvement in escape attempts.

Funder encounters Hagen Koch at a reconstructed section of the Wall and joins his rehearsal tour of Berlin Wall remnants.

Funder visits the Stasi document reconstruction office in Nuremberg and finds the puzzle operation far smaller and slower than she imagined.

From a restroom attendant's wistful tale of missed travel to Miriam's brutal imprisonment and expulsion from her homeland, this pool captures the wider human cost of East Germany's surveillance state. Funder encounters former Stasi officer Herr Winz, who remains unrepentant and gifts her a copy of The Communist Manifesto, and hears Julia's story of a love affair quietly destroyed by state interference. The Stasi's last desperate hours — shredding files before crowds surrounded their headquarters — reveal a collapsing system in chaotic retreat. Hagen Koch's role in physically marking the Wall's route and the state's silencing of East Germany's most beloved rock band add texture to the regime's reach into everyday life. On her return visit, Funder rejoins Koch's Wall tour before confronting the underwhelming reality of the Nuremberg document reconstruction project.

Supporting stories that fill in the human texture of life under the Stasi.

Funder resolves to move to Berlin and pursue the untold stories of people who resisted the East German regime.

Desperate to end sleep deprivation, Miriam fabricates an absurd story about meeting strange men in a Berlin bar.

At Charlie's suspicious funeral, Miriam notices he has no strangulation marks on his neck, contradicting the official suicide verdict.

Funder arrives home to find her landlord Julia unexpectedly unscrewing bookcases from the apartment walls to take them away.

Julia is summoned to a police station where a Stasi major confronts her with copies of her private love letters.

The Stasi major orders Julia to become an informer against her Italian boyfriend, and she refuses.

Julia's family decides to phone Erich Honecker's office directly to complain about the Stasi's interference in her life.

Julia reveals to Funder that she was raped in an elevator at a wedding and the police refused to take her seriously.

Herr Christian reveals that a friend he confided in about his extramarital affair secretly reported him to the Stasi.

Hagen Koch resigns from the Stasi after discovering that his father was coerced into joining the Communist Party.

The Stasi force Koch's wife to sign divorce papers under threat of losing their child, using the papers to pressure Koch into staying.

Frau Paul is freed from prison but her long-separated son is returned to her so changed that he feels a stranger.

Herr Bohnsack begins destroying classified Stasi documents against direct orders when he senses the regime is about to collapse.

Funder receives word that her mother's cancer has returned and must leave Berlin immediately, not returning for four years.

Miriam tells Funder her theory that Stasi guards struck Charlie and left him to die, rather than staging a proper execution.

This pool traces the pivotal moments when individuals were confronted with impossible choices under the Stasi's grip. Miriam invents a desperate lie under interrogation and later discovers at Charlie's funeral that the official account of his death cannot be trusted. Julia's life is quietly derailed by a Stasi major who reads her love letters and demands she betray the man she loves, a trauma compounded by a violent crime the state refused to acknowledge. Hagen Koch's crisis of conscience leads him to resign from the Stasi, only for the regime to manipulate him back into service by threatening his family with forged documents. Herr Bohnsack makes the rare choice to destroy files and speak publicly, while Funder herself must abruptly leave Berlin when her mother's illness calls her home. Years later, Miriam finally gives voice to her theory of how Charlie died, offering not closure but the fragile comfort of truth-seeking.