Sepp Mall

Being a Child in Times of War

War and the Nazi era from a child's perspective. A novel about the emigration from South Tyrol and the Nazi crimes against people with disabilities. In 1942, a family from South Tyrol decides to emigrate to the German Reich as part of the option. Eleven-year-old Ludi recounts the last days in the village and their first stop in the German Reich: Innsbruck. On the doctors' orders, his disabled brother Hanno must be taken to an institution near Hall. The rest of the family continues on to Upper Austria. The father is drafted into the Wehrmacht, and Hanno does not return either. A letter from a care institution in the Reich is all that remains of him for the family. Sepp Mall is considered one of the most important writers from South Tyrol, engaging with complex themes of recent history in his work. How can the incomprehensible be understood, and how does one survive a collective trauma? A moving novel that poetically explores a child's grief for his brother.