The wish child watches over Siggi and Erichmas, two children who find temporary refuge amidst the rubble of 1945 Berlin.  Around them people are talking of surrender.  The narrator is the wish child, and his “voice” is based on the first child to legally be put to death at a children’s clinic in Leipzig, in accordance with the Nazi policy of killing the disabled. Perhaps he was the fore-runner of all the mass murders to come. Telling a story that begins inside the wreckage of a nation’s dream, this powerful book became an international best-seller.
 
Author: Catherine Chidgey