Tomorrow 7pm at Rye Books! Join author Hester Vaizey for the launch of 'Born In The GDR'

[ryebooksltd]

On 9 November 2016 Berlin will be celebrating once again, this time commemorating the 27th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To coincide with this author Dr Hester Vaizey is joining us again to discuss her thought provoking book Born in the GDR: Living in the shadow of the wall, now published in paperback.

The changes that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 were particularly dramatic for East Germans. With the German Democratic Republic effectively taken over by West Germany in the reunification process, nothing in their lives was immune from change and upheaval: from the way they voted, the newspapers they read, to the brand of butter they bought. But what was it really like to go from living under communism one minute, to capitalism the next? What did the East Germans make of capitalism? And how do they remember the GDR today? Are their memories dominated by fear and loathing of the Stasi state, or do they look back with a measure of fondness and regret on a world of guaranteed employment and low living costs? This is the story of eight citizens of the former German Democratic Republic, and how these dramatic changes affected them.

All of the people in the book were born in East Germany after the Berlin Wall was put up in August 1961, so they knew nothing other than living in a socialist system when the GDR fell apart. Their stories provide a fascinating insight not only into everyday life in East Germany, but also into how this now-vanished state is remembered today, a quarter of a century after the fall of the Wall.

Hester will be bringing some of her home brewed Berliner Weisse..we would recommend you try this..

Please email us if you can make it so we can get an idea of numbers, thank you!

Free event.

Best wishes,

All at Rye Books

45 Upland Rd, SE22 9EF [email protected] 020 3581 1850