Oliver Fritz, The Iron Curtain Kid

This book blew me away! History books often have a tendency to be dry but based on other reviews that I have read I thought I might give the Iron Curtain Kid a go. And I am happy I did. This book is neither a biography nor is it a history book - it's two books in one! It shows the bigger picture of history and, very entertainingly, how it was experienced by the East Germans at the time. Yet it still provides the reader with a wealth of factual information. It's a skill to get the right balance between being funny and serious. A skill the authors manages with flying colours.

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.

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 the average person had to wait over a decade to buy a car and have a telephone installed; how a visit to the Parliamentary Chamber in the Palace of the Republic was an eye opener and he blows away many myths about life behind The Wall.

A thoughtful, fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read.

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 written in such a clever style that after a while I really felt I was back in the German Democratic Republic. Only that now I had someone on my side explaining to me all the things I did not understand or was ignorant of at the time. It's a marvellous book written by a brilliant author. He is definitely one to watch!

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 bit humdrum to him at the time but looking back he was experiencing something quite unique. His story is by turns humorous, mundane and outlandish and, as his yearning to see the west grows, touching. As the eighties progress his year by year approach gathers pace and you wait with baited breath for the pay-off. Five Stasis!

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 have I read a book that was so funny and informative at the same time. A gem!

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 country functioned. It's a genuinely fascinating snapshot of a particular period and place in history that today seems incredibly eccentric and bizarre.

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 from a film set while wearing a policeman's uniform, his "dress smartly" days in which he and his girlfriend put the wool over their fellow east germans' eyes by pretending to be westerners (with more or less success), their adventures on holidays in other communist countries and....and...and. The book starts with the Berlin Wall going up and ends with the Berlin Wall coming down. The author was one of the many people who broke through the Wall in November 1989 to celebrate the night away in the West just to return to the East on the following morning to go to work and start on time. The book tells of romance, tears and even death but most of all it will make the reader feel like a cheshire cat - permanently grinning.