Review of 'The Wayfinders' by Wade Davis.

Review of 'The Wayfinders' by Wade Davis

Review of Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic: Reading through the Iron Curtain edited by Nicole Moore and Christina Spittel

Review of Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic: Reading through the Iron Curtain edited by Nicole Moore and Christina Spitte

Dark Mermaids.

Sporting success is defined by athletic prowess, mental stamina and the ability to win. The balance between winning by fair, or foul, means is an area of fierce debate. This thesis seeks to illuminate the workings of the former German Democratic Republic Doping Scam: (Theme 14.25); to shed light on the human tragedy of steroid engineering, and to explore, within a fictitious world, new ground in areas that have offered little in research. Dark Mermaids, a novel, presents a narrative through contemporaneous documentation of the experiences of a fictitious former Olympic GDR swimmer and a tenacious young girl. In parallel, the novel considers the idea of selective memory, the paranoia of life under a dictatorship, and the notion of 'home' in a divided country. The accompanying essay further explores, through example, the themes of amnesia and exile, and the theory that the common exilic pathology of strain and estrangement of flight is never, in practice, over. Synopsis of Novel 1990. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Police officer Sophia Kunstler slips through the backstreets of Berlin looking for sex in the arms of a cruel faced blue eyed stranger; the same boy she has found in clubs and dance halls over many years. Outside her apartment a cold and frightened girl waits with a letter. Dagmar, Sophia's mother, is dying. Sophia and her father must return to the former GDR, a place from which they had escaped. As part of her job, Sophia is required to investigate claims of Stasi collaboration in her former home town's local police force. Suppressed memories gradually surface, and these impel her to revisit the GDR elite sports training ground, where death, or a new life, await

Review of Between Sky and Sea by Herz Bergner

Review of Between Sky and Sea by Herz Bergne

Review of 'Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall' by Kazuo Ishiguro

Review of 'Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall' by Kazuo Ishigur

Dark Mermaids

Set in 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin wall, Dark Mermaids by Anne Lauppe-Dunbar is a shocking story of political, physical and emotional abuse.Unhappy west-Berlin police officer Sophie is called on to investigate the murder of her childhood friend Kathe, after her beaten body is discovered in Sophie’s local park. At the same time she is forced to return to the hometown she fled as a teenager with her enigmatic father Petrus, to care for the dying mother she believes abandoned her years before.As she reluctantly delves into the sordid Stasi secrets of those she grew up with, Sophie uncovers a web of horrors centering on her own abusive past as a child swimming star in the GDR. But her hunt for the truth has not gone unnoticed all those close to her, who still have too much to hide.Shortlisted for the Impress Prize this East German noir thriller turns on the horrors of a system that doped its youngsters to sporting superhero status, and then apparently left them for dead