East Germany, the country that imploded in the recent history of Europe, was a combination of images, sensations and inferences that Augusto Bordato, a sensitive connoisseur of Germanys recent history, collected during the many years he spent in East Berlin, both before and after the Wall fell. The images reveal aspects of daily life distant in time and still largely unknown. The Wall, certainly, but also the legendary Trabant, emblem of an entire country. The queues in front of the shops, the May Day parades, the end - less and lengthy postwar reconstruction. And then there was the punk scene with its young rebels, the widespread practice of nudism, the ex - cursions in the romantic countryside of classical German literature. East Germany, the country that imploded in the recent history of Europe, was a combination of those images, sensations and inferences that Augusto Bordato, a sensitive connoisseur of Germanys recent history, collected during the many years he spent in East Berlin, both before and after the Wall fell. The images recount the life of a country which perhaps weve all too rapidly forgotten and reveal aspects of daily life distant in time and still largely unknown. One after another, the photographs and words of this book make us feel that particular astonishment which comes from looking at a past we thought we knew.