Ebook: The file: a personal history

In 1978 a romantic young Englishman took up residence in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later Timothy Garton Ash--by then famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe--returned. This time he had come to look at a file compiled by the Stasi, the East German secret police, with the assistance of dozens of informers. It contained a meticulous record of Garton Ash's earlier life in Berlin. Here, Garton Ash describes what it was like to rediscover his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and then to go on to confront those who had actually informed against him to the secret police. This is a personal narrative as disquieting and as morally provocative as any fiction by George Orwell or Graham Greene. And it is all true.