Category: BBC FOUR

Date: 16.06.2004
Printable version

Anna Funder was named last night (Tuesday 15 June) as the winner of the BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2004 for her book, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall.

Stasiland, Funder's first book, gives a voice to the ordinary people of the former German Democratic Republic.

The reader follows Funder as she unearths stories of astonishing cruelty inflicted on its citizens by the state.

Despite the sobering subject matter, it contains wonderful flashes of humour and has been described as "a brilliant and necessary book" which "both devastates and lifts the heart."

The chair of judges, Michael Wood, made the announcement live on BBC FOUR from a dinner held at London's Savoy Hotel.

He commented: "The quality and range of this year's entries for the BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize have been wonderful.

"The winner, Anna Funder's Stasiland, is a fresh and highly original close-up of what happens to people in the corrosive atmosphere of a totalitarian state.

"An intimate portrait - both touching and funny - of survivors caught between their desire to forget and the need to remember.

"A beautifully executed first book, Stasiland deserves to be packed with the holiday reading this summer and enjoyed by anyone who loves good writing."

The BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, now in its sixth year, celebrates originality and diversity in contemporary non-fiction publishing.

Named in honour of the great critic, essayist, lexicographer, poet and biographer, the BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize is the world's richest prize for non-fiction, recognising works published in English in the UK, regardless of the nationality of the author.

The winning book was chosen from a shortlist of six, announced last month. The winner receives a cheque for £30,000, and each of the shortlisted authors receive a cheque for £1,000.

The judges for the 2004 prize were: writer and broadcaster, Michael Wood (Chair); author, broadcaster and journalist, Aminatta Forna; political editor of BBC TWO's Newsnight, Martha Kearney; science writer and broadcaster, Simon Singh; and author, journalist and broadcaster, Francis Wheen.

The Winner

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder (Granta). In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited and East Germany ceased to exist.

In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight, and one in fifty East Germans were informing on their countrymen and women, there are a thousand stories just waiting to get out.

Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany – she meets Miriam, who as a 16 year-old might have started World War III, visits the man who painted the line which became the Berlin Wall and gets drunk with the legendary 'Mik Jegger' of the east, once declared by the authorities to his face to "no longer to exist".

This is history full of emotion, attitude and complexity.

Anna Funder was born in Melbourne in 1966 and grew up there and in Paris. She has worked as an international lawyer and a radio and television producer.

In 1997 she was writer-in-residence at the Australia Centre in Potsdam.

Stasiland – which was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and in Australia for The Age Book of the Year and the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards for non-fiction – is her first book.

She lives in Sydney with her husband and daughter.

Former Winners

1999 - Stalingrad by Antony Beevor

2000 - Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns 2001 - The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh
2002 - Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 by Margaret Macmillan
2003 - Pushkin: A biography by T.J.Binyon

Notes to Editors

Other shortlisted titles include:

Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps by Anne Applebaum Allen - Lane/Penguin
John Clare: A Biography by Jonathan Bate - Picador
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson - Doubleday
The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War by Aidan Hartley - HarperCollins
Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland - Little, Brown

The BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction is open to books in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

Books published in English by writers of any nationality were eligible for the prize, provided they were published in the UK between 1 May 2003 and 30 April 2004.

The BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction is managed by a steering committee and administered by Colman Getty PR.

The steering committee is made up of Stuart Proffitt (Publishing Director, Penguin, Chair), Mark Bell (BBC Arts), Martin Grindley (Independent Bookseller), Dotti Irving (Chief Executive, Colman Getty PR), Mervyn King (Governor, The Bank of England), Charles Moore, (Writer and Journalist), Franny Moyle, (BBC Arts), James Naughtie (Broadcaster, BBC Radio 4's Today Programme) and Peter Straus (Literary Agent, Rogers, Coleridge and White).

BBC FOUR televised the awards ceremony and featured complementary programming on the channel and online support on bbc.co.uk/four.

BBC FOUR is a full member of the BBC's portfolio of free-to-air, licence fee-funded channels which transmits daily from 7.00pm.

There were 120 books submitted this year with five call-ins. The longlist was made up of 23 titles, and the shortlist was made up of six titles.