Mama Dear. Memoir of a Postwar Childhood in Europe Christine Haidegger, Translated by Heidi J. Petermichl

In Mama Dear Christine Haidegger paints a picture of the post-war time in Europe. She has Irene, the protagonist, tell her story in her own words. With precise insight into this small girl, the author gives a detailed account of Irene's growing up. Slowly her language and her insights grow up with her. She observes the end of the war, the arrival of the American soldiers, her mother's daily fight for survival, the meanness of most villagers against her mother. She is an avid reader and at age ten has the chance to go to an exclusive boarding school on a scholarship. Away from her beloved, peace-loving mother, bent by rules and unexplained orders, surrounded by teachers who will never listen but enforce rules just for rules' sake, Irene — always trying to understand the why of injustice and fight against it — is slowly worn down by different pressures. A childhood of the 1940s and 50s is being conjured up from the perspective of an overly sensitive little girl.