Oliver Fritz, The Iron Curtain Kid Reviews

teach1's review has yet to be rated - Be the first!
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Many books have been written about the Iron Curtain, this one is unique. A mixture of biography and history book it succeeds where other books fail: it paints a more complex picture of the East German society than a plain biography ever could and it provides the reader with lots of interesting facts and titbits without being boring. 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is a book, especially for teens and twens who are far too young to have experienced the Iron Curtain and Cold War for themselves. Here history comes alive. This book will engage pupils and I will be using it in my lessons.

Bette B's review has yet to be rated - Be the first!
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Oliver Fritz's The Iron Curtain Kid is an engrossing and insightful account of every day life under Communism. From the memorable morning in 1961 when East Berliners awoke to find the border to the West had been completely sealed off, to the sea-change phenomenon of the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989, we learn how the people fared during that time.
Wonderful Commie jokes pepper the book along with Oliver's lucid and sharp observations. He recalls how prices stayed the same for 30 years; that th ...

koalaaa's review has yet to be rated - Be the first!
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Having lived in East Berlin for a couple of years myself I'm quite familiar with life behind the Iron Curtain in general, and life behind the Berlin Wall in particular. And I can truly say that Oliver Fritz, The Iron Curtain Kid has succeeded where so many books have failed before. It's very informative without being dry. It's highly entertaining without being silly. It takes the reader by the hand and really transports him or her to an East Germany twenty or thirty years ago. The story is writt ...

On average, people found this review very helpful
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The Iron Curtain Kid by Oliver Fritz is a fascinating account of growing up in East Berlin. Oliver Fritz's eye for detail makes you feel as if you are right there with him. The memoir is bookended with two historic events -- the night the wall went up, as seen through the eyes of Oliver's parents, and the night the wall came down, as seen by Oliver (in the midst of an outing to a disco!) His account is quite gripping. Inbetween is the story of his everyday life in the DDR, a life which seemed a ...

weatherman's review has yet to be rated - Be the first!
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Oliver Fritz, The Iron Curtain Kid is a very good read and miles apart from similar books on the subject because instead of being written in German (as one would expect from a German author) it has been written in English, for an English market. All the things which a German reader would take for granted are properly explained (school cones, for example) but most of all I liked the sense of humor. It's present from the very first page to the last page and I can honestly say that never before hav ...

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I really enjoyed The Iron Curtain Kid. I've always been fascinated by what life was like for ordinary people in the former Soviet countries, and Oliver Fritz's book gives a really good insight into how ordinary people lived their everyday lives, making the most of what they had and finding ways to make life interesting and fun. In addition, the book includes a lot of worthwhile and interesting historical information about how East Germany social, political and economic institutions in the count ...

earlythirty's review has yet to be rated - Be the first!
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I had never heard of the author, so I was a bit skeptical when buying the book online but as soon as I started reading it I could not stop. The author grew up in east Germany, on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. But when reading the book I began to wonder whether itwas me who grew up on the wrong side. We hear of the authors' smuggling grandparents, his cat and mouse play with the mighty secret service, his gate crashing of an eastern bloc army command party, the adventure of sneaking away f ...