Child of All Nations

by Irmgard Keun

Book Overview

In this utterly enchanting novel, some of the great themes of 1930s Europe are refracted through the eyes of a child who is both naive and wise beyond her years. Irrepressible Kully, her charming, feckless father and her nervy, fragile mother are brought to life through Irmgard Keun's fastpaced prose.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590200993
• ISBN13: 9781590200995
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Length: 194 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 7.3"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 12

Customer Reviews

"Except Ye See as a Little Child ...

... ye shall not realize the absurdity of most matters in life." That's the commonest rationale for anyone to write a whole book in 'first person' narrative from the point of view of a child, to reveal the inanity and insanity of the adult world. And when that "adult world" is Europe in the 1930s, amid economic stagnation, the rise of fascism, and the impending catastrophe of persecution of Jews and others, there's so much insanity to reveal that even a child can fathom the horror of it. This "Child of All Nations" is Kully, a nine-year-old girl from Köln who starts her narrative in 1936 in a hotel in Ostende, where she and her mother are waiting for her 'famous writer' father to return from Prague with enough money to pay their hotel bill and redeem his family from hostagedom. The family has just escaped into exile from Hitlerian Germany, and Kully still speaks only the Köln dialect of Deutsch. By the end of the book, the girl will be conversant in French, Italian, Polish, several dialects of German, and English. Kully is indisputably precocious, as slyly resourceful as any kid in an American 'Home Alone' film. She's also amusingly naive at times. She understands some things one might not expect a nine-year-old to understand; at the same time, she 'intuits' the meaning of some things in ways that are bizarrely apropos despite being utterly wrong from an adult viewpoint. Kully's "voice" is remarkably convincing most of the time, or at least as much off the time as her author/creator wants it to be. But since Kully exists really as a spokesperson for poignant satire, one does need to make allowances for bits of wry insouciance here and there. When the child's perspective is altogether too narrow, the author is ever ready with an adult conversation quoted verbatim or a letter from Father, which Kully has opened secretly. All one learns directly from Kully about the political and economic crises around her is that Fear is universal and that adult despair seems overwhelming. Kully's narrative has no plot -- no beginning or ending -- as she is dragged from hotel to hotel, to Poland, Italy, Netherlands, France, eventually to America, to Virginia Beach VA, and back to Amsterdam. Kully develops an odd concept of the nation state and the borders thereof; she and her parents are always on the edge of expulsion from one country, for lack of visas, yet unwelcome in any other. Kully hopes to find a 'border' wide enough to let her mother and herself just plant themselves between hostile states. Kully's father is the "moving" force in her narrative... "moving" in both senses. His leftist writings have made his life decidedly perilous in Hitler's Germany, but how can a writer of German words support himself elsewhere? Besides, he's a man near collapse, frightened out of his wits at his prescience of the impending catastrophe of war, as well as quickly degenerating, a 'charming' drunk who sometimes remembers to feed his family by begging and borrowing shameless

"Except Ye See as a Little Child ...

... ye shall not realize the absurdity of most matters in life." That's the commonest rationale for anyone to write a whole book in 'first person' narrative from the point of view of a child, to reveal the inanity and insanity of the adult world. And when that "adult world" is Europe in the 1930s, amid economic stagnation, the rise of fascism, and the impending catastrophe of persecution of Jews and others, there's so much insanity to reveal that even a child can fathom the horror of it. This "Child of All Nations" is Kully, a nine-year-old girl from Köln who starts her narrative in 1936 in a hotel in Ostende, where she and her mother are waiting for her 'famous writer' father to return from Prague with enough money to pay their hotel bill and redeem his family from hostagedom. The family has just escaped into exile from Hitlerian Germany, and Kully still speaks only the Köln dialect of Deutsch. By the end of the book, the girl will be conversant in French, Italian, Polish, several dialects of German, and English. Kully is indisputably precocious, as slyly resourceful as any kid in an American 'Home Alone' film. She's also amusingly naive at times. She understands some things one might not expect a nine-year-old to understand; at the same time, she 'intuits' the meaning of some things in ways that are bizarrely apropos despite being utterly wrong from an adult viewpoint. Kully's "voice" is remarkably convincing most of the time, or at least as much off the time as her author/creator wants it to be. But since Kully exists really as a spokesperson for poignant satire, one does need to make allowances for bits of wry insouciance here and there. When the child's perspective is altogether too narrow, the author is ever ready with an adult conversation quoted verbatim or a letter from Father, which Kully has opened secretly. All one learns directly from Kully about the political and economic crises around her is that Fear is universal and that adult despair seems overwhelming. Kully's narrative has no plot -- no beginning or ending -- as she is dragged from hotel to hotel, to Poland, Italy, Netherlands, France, eventually to America, to Virginia Beach VA, and back to Amsterdam. Kully develops an odd concept of the nation state and the borders thereof; she and her parents are always on the edge of expulsion from one country, for lack of visas, yet unwelcome in any other. Kully hopes to find a 'border' wide enough to let her mother and herself just plant themselves between hostile states. Kully's father is the "moving" force in her narrative... "moving" in both senses. His leftist writings have madeihis life decidedly perilous in Hitler's Germany, but how can a writer of German words support himself elsewhere? Besides, he's a man near collapse, frightened out of his wits at his prescience of the impending catastrophe of war, as well as quickly degenerating, a 'charming' drunk who sometimes remembers to feed him family by begging and borrowing shameless