10 Tough Questions about Edge of Eternity

Answer: Because he's working for the East German secret police

Rebecca Hoffmann suspects Hans is having an affair, until she finds out he's in fact working for the Stasi (secret police). One day she is summoned to go to the Stasi headquarters where, to her great surprise, she meets her husband. An unexperienced Stasi officer had summoned the wrong Rebecca Hoffmann and had thereby, accidentally, blown Hans's cover. Rebecca's family is considered suspect because her father owns a factory in West Berlin, her mother and grandfather were social democrats during the Weimar republic and her grandmother is part of the English nobility. Hans was spying on the family by becoming Rebecca's boyfriend and later, after she had proposed to him, her husband.

After Hans is found out Rebecca has a divorce but Hans will continue to bully her family for the coming decades.

Answer: False

George meets his future second wife Maria Summers on the bus. He already knew Verena Marquand, who was a fellow student at Harvard.

Answer: Cuba

Tania is a journalist for TASS (Russian news agency), who writes and distributes the illegal newspaper "Dissident" in her spare time, together with fellow writer Vasili Yenkov. During a poetry meeting at Mayakovsky Square they distribute the newspaper among the crowd. When the meeting turns into a riot Tania is arrested. Luckily she doesn't have a copy of "Dissident" in her possession. Nevertheless she is taken to the KGB headquarters for questioning. Her brother Dimka, who is a high official, her uncle Volodya, who is a general in the Red Army, and her editor manage to get her out without punishment on the condition that she accepts an assignment abroad. In Cuba a post is open so she is sent there. She is in Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis.

Her friend Vasili Yenkov is not so lucky. He was in possession of five copies of "Dissident" when he was arrested and is sent to a labour camp in Siberia.

In the 1980s Tania works as a journalist in Poland.

Answer: Over the rooftops

Shortly after the Berlin Wall was put up some of the buildings were in East Berlin while the sidewalk was in West Berlin. Rebecca and Bernd climb to the roof of a building adjacent to a house near the wall. Via connecting roofs they reach an empty house near the wall where they lower themselves down with washing lines onto West Berlin soil. Unfortunately they are spotted by a guard who cuts the line. Bernd makes a bad fall which will leave him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Walli escapes by driving a lorry through a barrier. After he had come back to East Berlin to collect his girlfriend he escapes a second time through a tunnel under the wall.

In 1989 Alice and her boyfriend Helmut escape through a gap in the fence on the Hungarian-Austrian border, but by then the days of communism had almost come to an end.

Answer: The Guardsmen

The Guardsmen is the band of Dave's cousin Lenny. Dave joins the band as rhythm guitarist. When Dave secures a gig in a local club they change the name of the band to Plum Nellie because the owner of the club thinks "The Guardsmen" is a terrible name. When Plum Nellie plays in Hamburg lead guitarist Geoff is homesick and leaves the band. Walli takes his place. When Plum Nellie record their first TV performance, Lenni is fired from his own band because he looks too old-fashioned to appeal to teenagers.

The Bobbsey Twins is the name Walli and Karolin chose when they first performed together. The Topspins is a soul band that tours together with Plum Nellie on their first tour in the USA. The Love Factory is the band of Mandy, a love interest of Dave.

Answer: Frostbite

Tania is approached by a scrubby looking guy who handed her a bundle of papers. On the papers a story, entitled "Frostbite", is written by Ivan Kuznetsov. The man tells her that Kuznetsov is an alias for Vasili Yenkov, and that Vasili has saved his life in Siberia. Tania manages to detect Yenkov in Siberia where he lives in appalling conditions.

After serving his sentence he is not allowed to return to Moscow. When Tania is a correspondent in Prague she contacts Anna Murray who publishes Yenkov's debut in the West.

The story becomes a best-seller. The three wrong answers are later novels by Yenkov.

Answer: His wife has an affair with Marshal Pushnoy

Anyone at the higher ranks of Soviet society dreams of having a dacha. Normally you only get a dacha after many years of service but Dimka gets his before he's due one. He wonders why. When Dimka visits his dacha for the first time he sees his dacha is connected to the neighboring one, which belongs to Marshal Pushnoy.

Shortly before Khrushchev is replaced as First Secretary of the Communist Party he informs Dimka his wife Nina is having an affair with Marshal Pushnoy.

Answer: Robert Kennedy

George works for Robert Kennedy's campaign team so he's in LA when Kennedy is assassinated. During the ensuing gunfight George is hit in the arm.

George was present at a meeting in Robert Kennedy's house when they hear the news that JFK was assassinated in Dallas. Jasper Murray and Verena Marquand are witnesses of Martin Luther King's assassination in Memphis. Malcolm X isn't mentioned in the novel.

Answer: A photograph album

Fitz wants to attend the funeral of his sister Maud whom he hasn't seen for fifty years, but Hans Hoffman detains him long enough at the border to make sure he's misses the funeral. Carla gives Fitz an old photograph album with pictures from the early 1900s.

At the border Hans confiscates the album for examination by the forensic department. After Fitz has left Hans throws the album in the rubbish bin.

Answer: The election of Barack Obama

The main story ends with the fall of the Berlin wall but in the epilogue it takes a little peek beyond the 20th century. In 2008 George and his family are watching Barack Obama's victory speech on television. George looks back to the 20th century and thinks about the long struggle Afro-Americans had in their fight for equal rights.