The wish child
Subtitle: a novel
By: Catherine Chidgey
Edition: First Counterpoint hardcover edition.
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 371
ISBN-13: 9781640090972
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945; Children; New Zealand fiction; Fiction
Description: Germany, 1939. Two children watch as their parents become immersed in the puzzling mechanisms of power. Sieglinde lives in the affluent ignorance of middle-class Berlin, her father a censor who excises prohibited words ("promise", "love", "mercy") from books. Erich is an only child living a lush rural life near Leipzig, tending beehives, aware that he is shadowed by strange, unanswered questions. Drawn together as Germany's hope for a glorious future begins to collapse, the children find temporary refuge in an abandoned theater amid the rubble of Berlin. Outside, white bedsheets hang from windows; all over the city people are talking of surrender. The days Sieglinde and Erich spend together will shape the rest of their lives. Watching over them is the wish child, the enigmatic narrator of their story. He sees what they see, he feels what they feel, yet his is a voice that comes from deep inside the ruins of a nation's dream.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 368-370).