The Wish Child

This internationally bestselling historical novel that "fans of The Book Thief will enjoy" follows two children and a mysterious narrator as they navigate the falsehoods and wreckage of WWII Germany (Publishers Weekly).

Germany, 1939. As Germany’s hope for a glorious future begins to collapse, two children, Sieglinde and Erich, 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.

Winner of the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Awards

“A remarkable book with a stunningly original twist.” —The Times (London)

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.