The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War
By Philip Oltermann
Faber & Faber £14.99

PHILIP OLTERMANN is the Guardian’s German correspondent and is clearly keen to jump aboard the gravy train of Stasi horror stories. In discussing this latest “Stasi revelation” book, it is difficult to know where to start in terms of trying to discover factual nuggets buried beneath the huge slagheap of fabulation.

In researching his book, Oltermann takes the easy seam, already well mined by his forerunners. He plunders the “Stasi Archives” to investigate the story behind a poetry circle set up by members of the GDR’s Ministry of State Security (MfS) or, in Western jargon, “the Stasi.”