The Stasi Poetry Circle : The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War

Imagine a world where the secret police believed that writers were embedding subversive messages in their works, and their solution was to train their own poets, weaponizing poetry in the battle against their perceived enemies. This extraordinary true story takes you into the heart of East Germany's Stasi, where a group of soldiers and border guards gathered monthly in a heavily guarded military compound to learn the art of lyrical verse writing. Journalist Philip Oltermann spent five years meticulously sifting through Stasi files, unearthing lost volumes of poetry, and tracking down surviving members of this Red poet's society, unveiling a little-known tale where spies turned poets and poets turned spies, all in an attempt to win the Cold War.

Described as "engrossing" by The Observer, "remarkable" by The Times, "magnificent" by Phillipe Sands, and "gripping" by Literary Review, this book is a history so outlandish and unlikely that you feel it must be true, as Anthony Quinn of The Observer Book of the Week puts it. Oltermann's grippingly well-written account of The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War takes you on a journey through the intersection of poetry and espionage, where the lines between art and surveillance blur in the most unexpected ways.