The Wish Child
  • Published: 3 September 2018
  • ISBN: 9781784704339
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $27.99
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The Wish Child

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A dark and terrifying portrayal of the way two ordinary German children – Siggi and Erich – are drawn into the Nazi dream of a perfect nation

'A wonderful new talent' Nick Hornby

Germany, 1939. Sieglinde lives in the affluent ignorance of middle-class Berlin. Erich is an only child living a lush rural life, aware that he is shadowed by strange, unanswered questions. Both children watch as their parents become immersed in the puzzling mechanisms of power.

Drawn together as Germany’s hope for a glorious future begins to collapse, the children find temporary refuge in an abandoned theatre amidst the rubble of Berlin. The days they spend there together will shape the rest of their lives.

Winner of the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction
  • Published: 3 September 2018
  • ISBN: 9781784704339
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Catherine Chidgey

Catherine Chidgey is a multiple award-winner whose novels have achieved international acclaim. The Axeman’s Carnival was a number one bestseller in her native New Zealand, as was her previous novel Pet. Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her debut, In a Fishbone Church, won won Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South-East Asia and South Pacific region). It also won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times Book Review and a Best Book in the LA Times. The Axeman’s Carnival and The Wish Child both won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction – New Zealand’s most prestigious literary award. Other honours include the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Nielsen Independent New Zealand Bestseller award. Catherine Chidgey lives in Ngāruawāhia and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato.

portrait photo of Catherine Chidgey

Praise for The Wish Child

A brilliant novel, with a cohesive and persuasive vision of human beings under stress, a subtle prose-style and a major grasp of things that really matter.

Reid's Reader blog (NZ)

Compellingly gentle and empathetic...one of our 'must read' novelists. It is a book difficult to put down and deserving of more than one reading.

Otago Daily Times (NZ)

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

I love this book... I love the way, at this critical point in the world, when fundamental human values are violated, The Wish Child reminds us with grace and understated wisdom of a need to strive for universal good. I ached as I read. This novel is unmissable.

Stuff (NZ)

This novel is remarkable for its authenticity, this is a fiercely determined act of imagining... Heart-rending.

North and South (NZ)

A remarkable book with a stunningly original twist.

The Times

An intriguing read

Fanny Blake, Woman & Home

Richly imaginative, memorable story

Nick Rennison, Sunday Times