Child of the Ruins
The ruins are the ruins of Berlin, which still stood in ruins in 1948 and for several years to come. The child does not appear until near the end of the book, because the main strand of the plot is Anna’s search for the little boy who disappeared from her apartment as a baby three years earlier. The search takes her among the packs of feral children who survive (with difficulty) in the city’s bomb sites.
The main themes of the book are the ghastliness of life in Berlin in the late 1940s and the savagery of the Soviet occupiers, with one honourable exception. The narrative shuttles between Anna, her friend, Ingrid and Anna’s Russian lover, Timur. It is a violent and melodramatic story and to my mind not easily credible. However, this was a city of extremes and it makes for an exciting tale.
