Bridget van der Zijpp

The Auckland-based author’s third novel, I LAUGH ME BROKEN, is set in Berlin and will be out in September.

STASILAND, by Anna Funder. What drove the state security service of East Germany, known as the Stasi, to torture its own citizens? Do its officers regret it now? Brave Anna Funder wanted to know.

She placed ads in a paper guaranteeing anonymity, had some very strange interviews with former Stasi officers, then wrote her fascinating book exposing how unresolved this history still is. One day, you find yourself sitting on the U-Bahn in Berlin opposite a furtive-looking man in a polyester suit. After reading this, you begin to wonder.

GO, WENT, GONE, by Jenny Erpenbeck. Retired academic Richard notices some African men demonstrating in Alexanderplatz and becomes curious about them. “Where exactly is Burkina Faso?” he thinks. “Why have they come here?” When I first went to Germany in 2016, the huge influx of asylum seekers was often referred to with words such as “crisis”. This novel provided a brilliantly human insight into the limbo of displacement, through the slightly plodding perspective of one kindly old man.

THE COW WHO FELL IN THE CANAL, by Phyllis Krasilovsky. My earliest love – a cow who wants to see more of the world floats down the canal, past windmills and tulips, causes a fuss in a cheese market and returns home with a straw hat. Grew up on a farm, Dutch father, loved cheese, could so relate. l