Anna Funder

Australian author (born 1966) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anna Funder (born 1966) is an Australian author. Her book, Stasiland, won the 2004 UK's Samuel Johnson (now Baillie Gifford) Prize for best non-fiction published in the English language.[1] In 2012 her novel All That I Am, won Australia’s most prestigious fiction prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award.[2] Her Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller on release in August 2023[3] and it was awarded France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger 2024.[4] The Kirkus Reviews (starred review) hailed it as "electrifying" and "a spellbinding achievement."[5] It was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2023[6] and named a Book of the Year by The Guardian,[7] the Independent,[8] the Economist,[9] LitHub,[10] the Telegraph, the Daily Telegraph,[11] the Financial Times[12] and the Times.[13]

Born1966 (age 59–60)
Melbourne, Australia
OccupationWriter
NationalityAustralian
EducationBA (Hons), LLB (Hons), MA, DCA (Creative Writing)
Quick facts Born, Occupation ...
Anna Funder
Anna Funder, Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, 2012
Anna Funder, Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, 2012
Born1966 (age 59–60)
Melbourne, Australia
OccupationWriter
NationalityAustralian
EducationBA (Hons), LLB (Hons), MA, DCA (Creative Writing)
Alma materUniversity of Melbourne
Years active2002—
Notable worksStasiland (2003), All That I Am (2011), Wifedom (2023)
Notable awardsMiles Franklin Award 2012, Samuel Johnson Prize 2004
PartnerCraig Allchin
ParentsDr Kate Funder, John Funder
Website
annafunder.com
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Life

Early life

Funder’s father is Professor John Funder AC, an endocrinologist, and her mother was the late Dr Kate Funder, a psychologist.

Education

Funder was educated in Paris and Melbourne; graduating Dux of Star of the Sea College in 1983.[14] She studied at the University of Melbourne and the Freie Universität of Berlin before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Funder holds a BA (Hons), English and German, an LLB (Hons), an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne and a Doctor of Creative Arts from the University of Technology Sydney.

Funder speaks French and German fluently.[15]

Funder began her career as an international lawyer for the Australian Government, in the Attorney-General’s Department in the Office of International Law. She worked on Section 52 of the Constitution, on human rights, and on constitutional law; and for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on international treaty negotiations. Other activities included a focus on the rights of a child and environmental protections.[16] Funder ended her career in law when she moved from Australia to live in Berlin and write full-time in the late 1990s.[17]

Journalism

Funder’s essays, feature articles and columns have appeared in The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Paris Review, Best Australian Essays, Die Zeit in Germany and The Monthly.  Anna wrote a column for the Norwegian publication Ny Tid, alternating with Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya up until Politkovskaya’s assassination in 2006. Funder’s feature essay "Secret History"[18] on the Nazi files held in the Arolsen Archives (Bad Arolsen), published in the Good Weekend and the Guardian, was awarded the ASA Maunder prize for journalism in 2007.[19]

Anna Funder's essays, feature articles and columns have appeared in numerous publications, such as The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, Best Australian Essays, The Monthly[20] Ny Tid, and have been selected for Best Australian Essays. Her feature "Secret History" which appeared in The Guardian and in Good Weekend about the files from the Nazi death camps held in obscurity by German authorities won the 2007 ASA Maunder Award for Journalism.[21]

Family

Anna Funder lived with her husband and three children in Brooklyn, New York for three and a half years, before returning to Australia in 2015.[22][23]

Stasiland

Main article: Stasiland

Funder's 2003 Stasiland tells stories of people who resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. In 2020 Maurice Frank, of the Berliner Zeitung wrote ‘Anna Funder’s Stasiland has become a classic of the literature on Communist East Germany. Thirty years after reunification, the book could serve as a warning for now.’[24] In the New York Times, William Gibson, called it ‘superb’[25]; Tom Hanks called it ‘fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, horrifying and very important’;[26] the London Review of Books called it ‘meticulous and compassionate. . . a heroic act of listening.’[27]

Stasiland has been translated into 25 languages and honoured with publication by the Folio Society.[28] It won the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize and was also the finalist for the Age Book of the Year Awards, Guardian First Book Award, Queensland Premier's Literary Award, Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing), Index Freedom of Expression Awards and the W.H. Heinemann Award.[29]

All That I Am

Main article: All That I Am (novel)

Funder's 2012 novel All That I Am reveals the unknown story of one of the earliest acts of Jewish resistance to Hitler. It tells the previously untold story of four German-Jewish anti-Hitler activists forced to flee Berlin for London. There, they continued the dangerous and illegal work of smuggling documents out of Goering's office, and giving them to Winston Churchill (a backbencher at the time) to try to alert the world to Hitler's plans for war. In 1935 two of them, both women, were found dead from poison in mysterious circumstances in the locked, top-floor bedroom of their Bloomsbury flat. The inquest, held at a time of British appeasement of Hitler, was a whitewash. Funder, who knew one of the women involved, reimagines the story.

The book was called "superb" by The Spectator, "strong and impressively humane" by the Times Literary Supplement),[30] "a beautiful ensemble novel of Graham Greene’esque proportions" by Weekendavisen, "an essential novel" by Colum McCann,[31] and "imaginative, compassionate and convincing" by The Wall Street Journal.[32]

Published in 25 countries, the novel was BBC Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime in the UK, and The Times (London) Book of the Month for May 2012.[33]

Awards received

Awards nominated

Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life

Main article: Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life

In her 2023 Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisibl Life, Anna Funder shows how Orwell and his biographers minimised or eliminated the contributions of his first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, to his work and life, as well as that of other women, including his mother and aunt. Funder examines the mechanisms of patriarchy, including the use of the passive voice, and demonstrates how these operate today to minimize the often unpaid, though essential work of women worldwide.  

Awards received

  • Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger 2024[39]
  • ABIA (Australian Book Industry Award) Biography Book of the Year Award, 2024[40]
  • BookPeople (Book Data) 2024 Non-Fiction Book of the Year[41]

Awards nominated

  • Prix Medicis (shortlisted)[42]
  • ELLE Grand Prix des Lectrices (shortlist)[42]
  • FNAC Prix du Roman 2024[43]
  • The Women’s Prize (longlisted)[42]
  • The Gordon Burn Prize (shortlist)[42]
  • NIB Award (shortlisted)[42]
  • Indie Book Awards (longlisted)[44]

Human rights activities

An advocate for free speech and privacy, Funder has worked with various human rights organisations and is a board member of the University of Melbourne Foundation and an honorary fellow of the University of Technology in Sydney.[16]

Funder has been an ambassador for the Norwegian-based International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN).[45] ICORN is a global network of cities offering safe havens for persecuted writers. She is a member of the Advisory Panel of the Australian Privacy Foundation.[46]

Funder has been a member of the Folio Prize Academy and PEN International, both its Australian and US chapters. In 2007 she was chosen to deliver a PEN 3 Writers Lecture.[47] She explored ways of thinking about extraordinary human courage such as that of Anna Politkovskaya, the Putin critic and journalist assassinated in 2006.[48] With Emeritus Professor Roy Green, Anna established the University of Technology Sydney's premier international speaker series, the Vice Chancellor’s Democracy Forum, to bring the expertise of the best global thinkers to bear on the challenges to democracy in our time.[49]

Funder has been outspoken about AI’s illegal global copyright theft of material, especially writers’ works, including her own. In 2025, together with Prof Julia Powles, Funder published on AI’s global misuse of copyright material.[50] She appeared with Tom Keneally and Sally Rippin before a Senate Committee hearing on AI companies’ ‘training’ of AI computer programs involving the theft of copyright material.[51][52] Her appearance went viral, garnering nearly half a million views.

Public appearances and named lectures

Funder speaks frequently at festivals and events all over the world, including the Edinburgh Festival, Hay-on-Wye festival, the Kolkata, Mumbai and Jaipur Literary festivals, Cheltenham Literary Festival, Le Conversazioni in Capri (with Don DeLillo), Norwich Worlds Literature festival (with J.M.Coetzee and Tim Parks), Ubud Writers Festival, Stavanger Festival Norway, Auckland Writers Festival, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth Writers Festivals (closing Address 2013) and Le Livre sur la Place, Nancy. She was selected by the Jewish Book Council of America to tour the USA with All That I Am. Anna has toured her books around the world including in the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the USA, New Zealand, India and China. She presented the Onassis Foundation Democracy Lecture in Athens, and the ICORN Oration in Paris with Masha Gessen and John Raulston Saul.[53]

A frequent contributor to radio, TV and podcasts, Funder is also an experienced interviewer. In 2025 she hosted Is it Fascism Yet? with M.Gessen and Prof. Jason Stanley at the Sydney Opera House.[54] She has delivered commencement addresses at universities and many named lectures, including in Reykjavik (University of Iceland).[55]

Funder has toured as a public speaker, and is a former German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Australia Council for the Arts, NSW Writing and Rockefeller Foundation fellow. Funder has delivered numerous named lectures, including:

Awards and recognition

List of literary awards:[citation needed]

List of literary award nominations:

  • The Age Book of the Year Awards[71]
  • The Guardian First Book Award[72]
  • Queensland Premier's Literary Award[73]
  • Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing)[74]
  • Index Freedom of Expression Awards[75]
  • W. H. Heinemann Award[76]
  • IMPAC Award[77]
  • Commonwealth Book Prize[78]
  • The Prime Minister's Literary Award[79]
  • ALS Gold Medal[80]
  • Adelaide Festival Fiction Prize[81]
  • Victorian Premiers Literary Award[82]
  • The Australian Society of Authors Asher Literary Award[81]
  • Nonfiction Indie Book Award, 2024[83]
  • Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 2024 for Wifedom[84]
  • Nib Literary Award, 2024 for Wifedom[85]
  • Gordon Burn Prize 2024 finalist: Wifedom[86]
  • NIB Literary Award for Wifedom[87]
  • FNAC Prix du Roman, 2024[88]
  • Prix Femina (shortlist)[89]
  • Prix Medicis (shortlisted)[90]
  • ELLE Grand Prix des Lectrices (shortlisted)[91]

Fellowships:

Other recognition:

Bibliography

  • Funder, Anna (2003). Stasiland: Stories from behind the Berlin Wall. London: Granta. ISBN 978-1-86207-655-6. OCLC 55891480.
  • All That I Am. London: Penguin. 2011. ISBN 978-1-926428-33-8.
  • The Girl with the Dogs. Australia: Penguin. 2015. ISBN 978-0-14357-350-0.
  • Wifedom – Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life. Hamish Hamilton. 2023. ISBN 9780143787112; about Eileen Blair, George Orwell's first wife.[95][96][97]

References

External links

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