The Wish Child

Author: Catherine Chidgey

Stock information

General Fields

  • : 30.00 NZD
  • : 9781776560622
  • : Te Herenga Waka University Press
  • : Te Herenga Waka University Press
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  • : November 2016
  • : {"length"=>["21.6"], "width"=>["13.5"], "units"=>["Centimeters"]}
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Catherine Chidgey
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  • : Paperback
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  • :
  • : en
  • : 823.92
  • : 384
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Barcode 9781776560622
9781776560622

Local Description

Catherine Chidgey’s The Wish Child is a stunning portrayal of war-time Germany through the eyes of two children, Sieglinde, from a middle-class family in Berlin, and Erich, from a farm near Leipzig. Theirs is a story of secrets, fear and overwhelming loyalty – for both the right and wrong reasons – a story that plays out in an atmosphere of paranoia and loss. Yet there is beauty in the small details and the happenstance relationship between Sieglinde and Erich. Chidgey’s novel is reminiscent of Jenny Erpenbeck’s End of Days; it’s beautifully crafted, building tension and foreboding and never letting the reader off the hook. The narrator’s voice is one of haunting sadness, all-telling yet allusive.

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Description

Winner of the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction Germany, 1939. Two children watch as their parents become immersed in the puzzling mechanisms of power. Siggi lives in the affluent ignorance of middle-class Berlin, her father a censor who excises prohibited words ('promise', 'love', 'mercy'). Erich is an only child living a lush rural life, 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 theatre amidst the rubble of Berlin. The days they spend there together will shape the rest of their lives. Watching over Siggi and Erich is the wish child. He sees what they see, he feels what they feel, yet his is a voice that comes from deep inside the wreckage of a nation's dream.

Awards

Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize Winner - Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2017.

Author description

Catherine Chidgey's previous novels are In a Fishbone Church (1998), Golden Deeds (2000), and The Transformation (2003). Some of her honours include Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific), a Betty Trask Award (UK), the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award, and a longlisting for the Orange Prize. Golden Deeds was chosen by Time Out magazine (London) as a book of the year, and was a 2002 Best Book in the LA Times Book Review and a 2002 Notable Book in the New York Times Book Review. In 2001 Catherine spent time in Menton, France as the Katherine Mansfield Fellow, and in 2002 she won the inaugural Prize in Modern Letters. She lives in Ngaruawahia.