Jana Hensel was thirteen on the night the Berlin Wall fell. The moment it happened, everyone proclaimed it a Great Historical Event. The Cold War was over! Freedom was at hand! But in all the heady celebration, no one stopped to think what it would mean for Jana and her generation of East Germans. These were the kids of the seventies, who had grown up in the shadow of Communism with all its hokey comforts: the Young Pioneer youth groups, the cheerful Communist propaganda, and the comforting knowledge that they lived in a Germany unblemished by an ugly Nazi past and a greedy Capitalist future. This had been her life. Suddenly it was gone.
In After the Wall, Jana Hensel tells the story of a lost generation of East German kids forced to abandon their past and feel their way through a foreign landscape to an uncertain future. It is a bittersweet story of loss and discovery.