Overview

This internationally bestselling historical novel follows two children and a mysterious narrator as they navigate the falsehoods and wreckage of World War 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.

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9781665132015

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A remarkable book with a stunningly original twist. -- Times (London) An incredible piece of writing...takes us inside the minds of the children and their families with such tenderness, humanity, and psychological astuteness that it creates an understanding of why they loved and followed Hitler. -- New Zealand Listener Sieglinde and Erich are children growing up in the shadows of WWII. Vance conveys every nuance of emotion in both adult and child characters, giving each a unique voice while briskly recounting events as the war grinds to its ignoble end. -- Booklist (starred audio review)

Author Information

"Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklist's very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. Catherine Chidgey's debut novel, In a Fishbone Church, won the Betty Trask Prize, Best First Book in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (South East Asia and Pacific Region), and was long-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, The Strength of the Sun, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Sunday Express (UK) called her third novel, The Transformation, ""a highly original read, as beautiful as it is terrifying."" Chidgey is the recipient of the 2017 Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and lives in Ngaruawahia, New Zealand."

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