Translated by Michael Hofmann
'Nothing short of a revelation... I am still haunted by it' - Evening Standard
Kully knows some things you don’t learn at school. She knows the right way to roll a cigarette and pack a suitcase. She knows that cars are more dangerous than lions. She knows you can’t enter a country without a passport or visa. And she knows that she and her parents can’t go back to Germany again – her father’s books are banned there. But there are also things she doesn’t understand, like why there might be a war in Europe – just that there are men named Hitler, Mussolini and Chamberlain involved. Little Kully is far more interested where their next meal will come from and the ladies who seem to buzz around her father.
Meanwhile she and her parents roam through Europe. Her mother would just like to settle down, but as her restless father struggles to find a new publisher, the three must escape from country to country as their visas expire, money runs out and hotel bills mount up.
A truly great read, in all the meanings of great - and funny and deft, heartening and terrible, relevant right now all over again -- Ali Smith
Nothing short of a revelation ... I am still haunted by it ― Evening Standard
A delicious novel about an irreverent thirteen year old, Child of All Nations smokes and so does its heroine -- Erica Jong
Hugely engaging... with room for everything - shrewdness, forgiveness, wit and loneliness - while love makes all its hopeless deals with hope -- Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces
