Roaming Ghostland

About the Book

Roaming Ghostland is about a defining moment both in modern European history and in the life of an idealistic young journalist who abandons everything to chase his dream as a freelance foreign correspondent covering the demise of East Germany after the Berlin Wall crashes down. Through the eyes of that young reporter, the book takes us deep into the soul of a country as it is being erased for all time, offering glimpses into the lives of ordinary people abruptly confronted with such alien concepts as capitalism, democracy, and personal freedom. He unmasks a land embroiled in chaotic, comical and horrific human drama. He stumbles upon mass graves and brutal neo-Nazi Skinhead attacks. He eats kangaroo soup; meets a psychiatrist lusting for Freud; follows East Germany’s first free elections and economic freefall; hawks chunks of the Wall; plays the black currency market and sips beer in a pub Napoleon frequented. He chronicles everything, knowing it will soon be lost to the ages. Sharing the writer’s odyssey along the way, we discover the joy and anguish of taking risks, confronting change, and seizing oncein- a-lifetime opportunities. By turns poignant, chilling, exuberant, and harrowingly humorous, Roaming Ghostland offers new insights into the uneasy melding of a unified Germany, as well as a vivid personal account of one man’s life-changing journey.

About the Author

STEVAN ALLEN was born in 1960 in Rochester, Minnesota, raised in Modesto, California and educated at the University of California, Davis, where he majored in German and International Relations. He is a former journalist with the St. Petersburg Times and Washington Post. His freelance dispatches from East Germany appeared in major newspapers throughout the United States and earned him a nomination as a 1990 Livingston Award finalist for foreign reporting. He now lives in Northern California with his wife and two sons.