After the success of Anna Funder’s Samuel Johnson Prize-winning Stasiland, the anticipation for her second book has been immense. Funder discussed the writing of All That I Am, which is also her first novel, with Jason Steger as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Blending fact with fiction, All That I Am is about a group of (largely Jewish) German writers, artists, and thinkers who protested against the Nazis’ rise to power. The characters are based on real people: playwright Ernst Toller, Ruth Blatt (renamed Becker in the novel), and her friend Dora Fabian (cousin, in the novel), amongst others. Exiled in London during the 1930s, the group covertly tried to thwart the Nazi regime and alert the world to Hitler’s intentions for war.