You Would Have Missed Me

As a young girl moves from East to West Germany in the 1960s, her clear eye and terrible experiences bring into focus the violence and lies of the adult world. What she sees tells us about the power of dreams for human beings – how necessary they are, how they make new things possible, and how destructive they can be. From her Nazi mother to her bitter father, the narrator’s gimlet eye sees how dreams of new worlds and alternative lives can produce horror.

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A pitch-perfect account of what it’s like to be a child... set to be one of this year’s favourites.

Anne Goodwin

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The voice of Birgit Vanderbeke’s novella, You Would Have Missed Me, is like no other. It is a child’s and not a child’s; it is innocent and knows the world with searing insight; it is funny and it is devastating. It is haunting, disturbing and painful; it is exhilarating, vital and mesmerising.

Leigh Wilson