Stasiland (2003) & Acts of Benign Psycho Horror

Anna Funder’s Stasiland was not the book I had originally intended to buy. Yet, that nagging feeling in my gut persisted with such intensity after that I returned back to the feminist bookstore I got it from and exchanged it. I’m embarrassed to say that it was the cover that first grabbed my attention. The 2021 edition from Granta Books features a photograph, taken by Ute Mahler in 1984, of a girl getting ready at a table that’s sparsely cluttered with makeup, cups, cigarettes, and a lone beer bottle. Her hair tumbles down her back in loose curls, her face is partially obscured as she holds a mirror up to put on lipstick. A portrait of a man — GDR leader Erich Honecker — hangs behind her shoulder in sharp contrast with the space’s patterned wallpaper, watching both us and her through the dark punctuation of his eyeglass frames.

I have been haunted by this book since I finished reading it 30,000 miles above the Atlantic Ocean on my flight home. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I was haunted at each step of reading Funder’s collected stories, spending my mornings in a disorienting stupor that feels like waking right before your alarm goes off.

After I reach the last page, take a final breath that feels like a loosened weight, and put the bag back in the tote bag splayed open under my seat, I think about the fact that my…