The wall in my head : words and images from the fall of the Iron Curtain

by Keith Gessen (Introduction)

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Genres

Publication

Rochester, NY : Open Letter, 2009.

Description

On the night of November 9, 1989, after months of unrest in Europe and East Germany, the checkpoints of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin were suddenly, almost accidentally, opened, starting a process that would bring together a Europe that had been divided for thirty years. This anthology, which features fiction, essays, images, and historical documents. It combines work from the generation of writers and artists who witnessed the fall of the Iron Curtain first-hand with the impressions and reflections of those who grew up in its wake. The book provides a unique view into the change, optimism, and confusion that came with 1989 and examines how each of these has weathered the past twenty years--From publisher's description.

User reviews

LibraryThing member BEC3
In the introduction to this collection, Keith Gessen writes “This is a fascinating and useful book.”

That, if anything, is an understatement.

This book provides an in-depth look, more so than any textbook or documentary can, at life within that mysterious (former) Eastern bloc. This collection of
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words and pictures, poetry and prose, fact and fiction, explores the Soviet era from the dawn of the Cold War to those fateful days in 1989 when it all came undone to the aftereffects of East meeting West.

From ideas of escape to the West, the absurdity of bureaucracy, and extremes of Soviet censorship to tales of people who proudly stood in queue for hours on end, who wanted to see what was on the other side of the fence, who wanted to eke out a living better than anyone else, to be somebody in a land where all were (supposedly) equal, to find love, and (my personal favorites) true stories of a band that started a revolution, the unexpected suffering of post-Communism Yugoslavia, and the struggle between Eastern desire for all things Western and Western guilt at altering, perhaps destroying, all culture Eastern, this book may, in fact, have it all.

The preceding may have been all for naught, however; The Wall in My Head is a magnificent collection that, despite my best efforts, I truly believe to be indescribable. Perhaps the greatest service I can do it now is to simply leave you with what might be its most profound thought, found in the final sentence of Mr. Gessen’s introduction: “The wall, you know, wasn’t entirely inside your head.”
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LibraryThing member RoseCityReader
The Wall in My Head: Words and Images from the Fall of the Iron Curtain is an anthology of fiction, essays, poetry, and historic documents published by Words Without Borders. Most of the pieces are short stories, some by world-famous authors like Milan Kundera, some by authors known only in Eastern
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Europe.

It is dense and, because the pieces are written by behind-the-Iron-Curtain authors, there are insider references and imagery that take a while to figure out. But the overall picture built up through little details and different perspectives is fascinating.

This is a book that will stick with the reader.
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LibraryThing member heavyleg
This is an amazing anthology! Chockful of short stories. poems, and non-fiction, this gave me a sense of what it must have been like to live in the boundaries of the former USSR and Eastern Bloc as that whole entity was coming to an end. As a student of history, I already was familiar with many of
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the facts of that time, but this anthology painted a much richer, more textured picture of the fall of the Iron Curtain. Kudos to Words Without Borders for assembling this remarkable collection.
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Language

Original language

Multiple languages

Barcode

10675
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