From the multi-award-winning author - a beautiful stunningly ambitious novel telling the story
of a young girl's battle for survival and search for the truth in occupied Vienna Adelheid
Brunner does not speak. She writes and draws instead and her ambition is to own one thousand
matchboxes. Her grandmother cannot make sense of this but Adelheid will stop at nothing to
achieve her dream. She makes herself invisible hiding in cupboards with her pet rat Franz
Joseph listening in on conversations she can't fully comprehend. Then she meets Dr Asperger
a man who lets children play all day and who recognises the importance of matchboxes. He
invites Adelheid to come and live at the Vienna paediatric clinic where she and other children
like herself will live under observation. But the date is 1938 and the place is Vienna - a
city of political instability a place of increasing fear and violence. When the Nazis march
into the city a new world is created and difficult choices must be made. Why are the clinic's
children disappearing and where do they go? Adelheid starts to suspect that some of Dr
Asperger's games are played for the highest stakes. In order to survive she must play a game
whose rules she cannot yet understand. Triumphant and tragic soulful and spirited The
Matchbox Girl is a burningly brilliant book - that brings the stories of a generation of lost
children into the light.
