KATE … Haha! To be honest, dudes, it almost WAS called Hamster of the Ruins because ‘hamstering’ was what the people of Berlin called going out to search for food after the war. They would scurry through the city trying to find scraps of anything edible during this time of hardship. So yes, hamsters get a good look in this time!
KATE — Child of the Hamster? It has a nice ring to it, I must admit. If the book was set in Hamburg, it would have been a perfect title. But as it all takes place in Berlin 1948, nope, it doesn’t work this time. Nevertheless, you guys, hang in there and one of these days you’ll grab the title headline. How about Bobby Bub Blasts Berlin. Now that’s a book I’d jump at!
KATE —-You are spot on. As you can see.
Kate — The genus Cricetus is the black-bellied European hamster. It is native to grassland in a large part of Europe, extending from Belgium, through Germany to Russia. It was considered a farmland pest and was trapped for its fur. So by 1948 the pesky critters had moved into parts of Berlin thinking it safer, (more smartass dudes!) but quickly found everyone there was starving and hamsters were top of the menu, at risk of being skewered and roasted over an open fire. Whoops! Sorry, dudes. Too much information!
Kate– You’re right. I mean—–
Kate – Yes, you’re right. The big crucial moments in history fascinate me. I like to explore their impact on the woman or man in the street. This story had been hovering like a shadow in the back of my mind for a long time. While writing other books, I could sense this one’s breath growing ever hotter and more urgent and each time I visited Berlin to see my son and his family who live there, I felt the story of the amazing Berlin Airlift struggling to get out.
It was an old piece of black & white film footage of soldiers unloading the Airlift planes at night at Tempelhof Airport that finally triggered Child of the Ruins.
I went to the Allied Museum in Berlin and was knocked out by what I found out there about the Airlift. So many tales of bravery and sheer hard graft.
The story refused to let go of me, but it wasn’t until the covid lockdown that I finally found the voice it had been seeking. The Airlift suddenly had huge resonance.
It is the story of a city blockaded by an enemy. Inhabitants are not allowed to leave. There’s a shortage of food, fights over scraps. So many people lost their livelihood. And everywhere lay a fear of people around you and a fear of being reported if you broke the rules. And aways a dangerous presence in their midst. It resonated in a big way because it felt like what we were all going through at the time of the terrible covid pandemic.
Soviet Russia decided to blockade the Allied-controlled sectors of West Berlin. Stalin cut them off from all supplies, permitting no access by land or water, with the intention of starving its two million people into submission and driving the American, British and French forces out of the city to allow total Communist Soviet control. A first step towards taking complete control of Germany.
He was convinced it would be a pushover because he knew the West had no stomach for another war. Boy, did he get that wrong! The Allies put into operation an almost impossible day and night Airlift of essentials to keep the inhabitants alive. Everyone said the feat was impossible but America’s General Tunner made it happen. A never-ending stream of aircraft landed and took-off constantly day and night for almost a year in all weathers. But tensions were running high as Soviet military power threatened and life within the city was hard.
KATE — Child of the Ruins is about Anna Wolff
and her search for her son among the wreckage of Berlin. Anna is a rash and resilient, brave and foolhardy young woman. It’s simple: in the chaos after the war, survival depends on cunning and knowledge. It means that the line between right and wrong has become dangerously blurred.
The story takes place during the Berlin Airlift in the winter of 1948. Anna lives with her mother in the Russian sector where food is scarce and where people are snatched from their beds with no warning. Spies and informers are everywhere. Words are whispered for fear of reprisals and no one knows who to trust.
Times are hard, so Anna takes a job out at Tempelhof, the American airbase. But she is a damaged young woman. Three years earlier Anna and her mother were attacked by Red Army soldiers and Anna killed one of them. This is the dangerous secret that she and her mother share, but when the resulting child is born, Anna’s mother abandons it out in the city. Anna is grief-stricken and searches for the child among the many Wolfskinder, the orphan kids who live like rats (or hamsters!) among the ruins.
When Anna begins work at Tempelhof, to her horror people start dying around her. She realises she is being stalked — but by whom and why? As she deepens the search for her son, the more dangerous her life seems to become. But Anna is tenacious and it’s only a matter of time before the hunted turns into the huntress herself.
At Tempelhof she is befriended by Ingrid Keller, a risk-taker who used to be a highwire circus performer, and she is also helped by Timur Voronin, a major in the Soviet Red Army. Together they are drawn into the dangerous world of Soviet espionage, until her enemy is forced out into the open. Then she must battle her own demons to find the truth.
SHEY —Kate, thank you so much for visiting and sharing your wonderful book. I have to say folks, it is beyond amazing. I have read all Kate’s books and been an unashamed fan of hers since her very first, The Russian Concubine, and I honestly feel, hand on heart, this is her absolute best, which is really saying something, given how much I have loved every one of them. I am loving every word for so many reasons, the characters, the history, the descriptive writing. Personally, given my dad belonged to a generation that seldom talked re their war time experiences, it has given me glimpses of the Berlin he was briefly in after the war, before being assigned to work in repatriation in the refugee camps. It’s is actually one of these rare books I never want to finish, it is THAT good. Before you go, Kate though, Berlin is obviously very different these days. Can you share an ideal day there with us?
KATE-–Ah, bliss!
My ideal day in today’s wonderful Berlin would kick off with a fabulous strong Turkish coffee in the buzzing Kreuzberg Kieze(neighbourhood). It’s a hotspot for artists with loads of cool restaurants around Kottbusser Tor.
When I’d downed my Schrippe and jam, I’d stroll along the Landwehr Canal, admiring the decorated barges, to the awesome flea market on a Saturday morning where I love to burrow for hours. Talking of fleas, I bet there are lots of hamsters hiding alongside the canal!
Then lunch. This is the high spot of my day, both literally and figuratively. I’d head over to the revolving restaurant way up in the sky at the top of the Fernsehturm (tv tower) in Alexanderplatz, 207 metres (720ft) up to be exact. The panoramic view out over the city takes your breath away and makes me think of those brave pilots in 1948 flying in with their life-giving cargo who would have had a bird’s eye view of a very different Berlin.
Kate and her lovely family -below
The afternoon might be a wander past the magnificent Reichstag (Brit architect Norman Foster’s symbolic rebuild) to the Museum Island or I might hop on a tram to Eberswalder Strasse to lay flowers at the deeply moving Berlin Wall memorial.
Finishing off with the fun buzz of outdoor karaoke in Mauerpark, then a fabulous lingering meal at PeterPaul’s restaurant in Mitte district and – depending on my mood – either a spectacular show at the Friedrichstadt Palast or an intimate schnapps with my mate Bobby Bub in a local bar where we get chatting (in pretty basic German) with a bunch of Berliners. Prost!
Kate —And thank you so much for having me, dudes. It’s been great. .
1948, Berlin. World War II has ended and there is supposed to be peace; but Russian troops have closed all access to the city. Roads, railway lines and waterways are blocked and two million people are trapped, relying on airlifts of food, water and medicine to survive. The sharp eyes of the Russian state police watch everything; no one can be trusted.
Anna and Ingrid are both searching for answers – and revenge – in the messy aftermath of war. They understand that survival comes only by knowing what to trade: food; medicine; heirlooms; secrets. Both are living in the shadows of a city where the line between right and wrong has become dangerously blurred.
But they cannot give up in the search for a lost child . . .
Kate Furnivall didn’t set out to be a writer. It sort of grabbed her by the throat when she discovered the story of her grandmother – a White Russian refugee who fled from the Bolsheviks down into China. That extraordinary tale inspired her first book, THE RUSSIAN CONCUBINE. From then on, she was hooked.
Kate is the author of ten novels, including THE SURVIVORS, THE RUSSIAN CONCUBINE, THE LIBERATION and THE BETRAYAL. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages and have been on the Sunday Times and New York Times Bestseller lists.