Life Under Totalitarianism: A Review of The House of One Thousand Eyes

Set in East Germany in 1983, Michelle Barker’s latest novel narrates in third person the story of Lena Altmann, a 17-year-old girl recently released from a mental hospital, confined there because of a nervous breakdown following her parents’ death in a factory explosion. Now she lives with her strict, dour aunt, a teacher and loyal Communist Party member whose biggest goal in life is her apartment building winning the Golden House Number competition for courtyard beautification. Lena, who works as a night housekeeper at Stasi (State Security) headquarters, looks forward to Sundays, which she spends with her Uncle Erich, a beloved author of children’s books in which he turns his experience as a miner underground into fantastical stories. Lena, too, dreams of writing fantasies based on the Western-style shopping mall in the basement of the Stasi complex. One day, Uncle Erich disappears, and all records of his existence are scrubbed. Lena makes increasingly risky efforts to find him, from staking out his old home, to breaking in and stealing a document hidden in a freezer and contacting the West Berlin editor whose phone number is on the document, from sneaking into Stasi files to convincing a neighbor, the son of a military officer, to let her use his ham radio to send a coded message.

Barker’s novel portrays in vivid detail what life was like in a totalitarian Communist regime. Lena’s passivity for much of the novel is realistic, as individuals in these societies have little leeway to act, the consequences of stepping over the line are dire, and trusting the wrong person can be fatal. Few teens are able to finish their education; despite her top grades before her parents’ accident, Lena is condemned to menial labor where one high-ranking Stasi official, who she calls Herr Dreck (Mr. Filth), sexually abuses her every night. As Lena struggles to maintain her sense of reality in a society built on absurd lies, she is labeled “difficult” and “crazy” in one more Soviet Bloc country where psychiatry was routinely abused to marginalize and punish dissidents. Readers get a sense of life in a place where there’s no freedom and no escape, where the individual counts for nothing and everyone is vulnerable to the perverse whims of those in power. If this portrait is bleak, it should be, and it should serve as a warning to anyone tempted by the siren song of authoritarianism or calls for intrusive surveillance and brutal policing in the name of “law and order.”