WINNER OF THE ACORN FOUNDATION FICTION PRIZE AT THE OCKHAM NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS
“A remarkable book with a stunningly original twist.” —The Times (London)
This international bestselling historical novel follows two children and a mysterious narrator as they navigate the falsehoods and wreckage of WW II Germany

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.

Catherine Chidgey