Anna is one of Australia’s most acclaimed and awarded writers. Her books STASILAND and ALL THAT I AM are prize-winning international bestsellers, translated into many languages. WIFEDOM, hailed as a ‘masterpiece’, has been chosen as a Notable Book of 2023 by the New York Times and a Book of the Year by The Times, The Economist, the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph (UK) and The Telegraph (UK).

Anna’s signature works tell true stories of courage, resistance, conscience and love, illuminating the human condition in times of tyranny and surveillance. She ‘explores the space between the conscience and the soul’ (Scotland on Sunday) and ‘uncovers everyday heroes buried by history’ (The Observer). In her worlds ‘wit survives and inhumanity is often undermined by its ironies’ (The Times).

Anna’s novella THE GIRL WITH THE DOGS reimagines love in the age of the tracking device.

There’s exhilaration in reading every brilliant word

Chloe Hooper

A ripper

Stephen Romei, The Australian

An enthralling novel

O, The Oprah Magazine

Superb… Still as acutely creepy a look into what life was actually like there as I’ve been able to find

William Gibson, New York Times

Your book Stasiland struck me like no other in the last five years. It is fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, horrifying and very important

Tom Hanks

The detail of her cases is so powerful as to disarm

Times Literary Supplement

Electrifying… Daring in both form and content, Funder’s book is a nuanced, sophisticated literary achievement… A sharp, captivating look at a complicated relationship and a resurrection of a vital figure in Orwell’s life

*Starred* Kirkus Review

This book is an utter triumph and nothing short of a miracle

Anne Summers

Imaginative, compassionate and convincing

Wall Street Journal

Spellbinding

Sunday Telegraph (UK)

Unforgettable

Sydney Morning Herald

In what she has to say about love and betrayal there is profound truth

The Times (UK)

A pacy and exciting read. Captures perfectly the sense of her characters’ deprived and dangerous lives

Daily Mail

A terrific read

Evening Standard

A fascinating book. It is written with rare literary flair. I can think of no better introduction to the brutal reality of East German repression

Sunday Telegraph

Meticulous and compassionate… a heroic act of listening

London Review of Books

A gripping story of love and betrayal. Dora is the most attractive fictional heroine in a long time

New Statesman

Anna was born in Melbourne and spent her early childhood in San Francisco and Paris, as her father completed his post-doctoral work in medicine, and her mother plotted a career in psychology while looking after three small children.

Anna studied English literature, German and law in Melbourne and West Berlin. In the 1990’s she was Counsel in International and Human Rights law for the Australian Government before leaving to live in Berlin and write full-time. She has continued her commitment to human rights as an Ambassador for the International Cities of Refuge Network which offers safe havens around the world to writers persecuted in their own countries.

Anna’s books have received many prestigious awards, including the Samuel Johnson (now Baillie Gifford) Prize for best non-fiction published in the English language for Stasiland, and Australia’s premier prize for fiction, the Miles Franklin, for All That I Am. Her essays have been widely published and anthologised. Anna is a University of Technology Sydney Luminary and Ambassador. In 2011 she was named in the ‘Top 100 People of Influence’ by the Sydney Morning Herald and appointed to the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.

After several years in Brooklyn, NY, Anna now lives in Sydney.