Lit in Translation

The Wish Child

The Wish Child

Catherine Chidgey (born 1970)

English editions

Written in English
  • The Wish Child

    Counterpoint · United States · 21 January 2020 · Paperback · 384 pages

  • The Wish Child

    Victoria University Press · New Zealand · 10 November 2016 · Paperback · 384 pages

  • The Wish Child

    Vintage · United Kingdom · 5 July 2018 · Paperback · 383 pages

  • The Wish Child

    Counterpoint · United States · October 2018 · Hardcover · 384 pages

  • The Wish Child

    Te Herenga Waka University Press · New Zealand · 12 March 2026 · Paperback · 384 pages

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Germany, 1939. Sieglinde has a comfortable middle-class childhood in Berlin; her father is a censor whose job is to strike banned words, love and mercy among them, from printed pages. Erich, who has no brothers or sisters, grows up in the countryside outside Leipzig looking after bees and dimly aware of questions about himself that nobody answers. Both families believe in the regime. As the war turns and the promised future crumbles, the two children are drawn together in the ruins of Berlin and hide out in a deserted theatre while white sheets hang from windows and the city talks of surrender. Over everything hovers the voice of the wish child, a narrator whose identity stays hidden, and decades later the elderly Siggi pieces together lives from wartime letters.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form
Novel
Genres
Historical, War (assigned by AI)
Set in
Germany, 1939–1945
First published
2016
Author's age
46 when first published
ISBN

9781776560622 (Victoria University Press, New Zealand)

9781784704339 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

9781640090972 (Counterpoint, United States)

9781640092679 (Counterpoint, United States)

9781776923120 (Te Herenga Waka University Press, New Zealand)

More
Wikidata