Title: Too much politics, not enough storytelling
Review: Tariq Ali has clearly moved a considerable distance from his fiery youth as a student leader - so far, indeed, as to appear at some moments in this book as an apologist for the DDR. Almost every page seems to have some kind of polemical point to make and it gets in the way of character development if not plot. All to clearly, it is easy to see the points he is making in this book. Don't blame the people of the DDR, they wanted an idealistic society but somehow it all went wrong. Well, not for nothing was there no equivalent of Hungary 1956 or Prague 1968 in Berlin. Put kindly, perhaps the whole of DDR society was in a state of shock following WWII - but for 40 years? I think not. This could have been a fascinating tale, but as I say, Ali's desperation to make his polemical points gets in the way with depressing regularity.
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