Sunday's Child

Book excerpt: Serena Katt’s grandfather, whom she knew as Opa, was a ‘Sunday’s Child’, one of the lucky ones for whom everything always went right. Opa left a brief account of his childhood and teenage years, but it is opaque, a story of prizes won and boyish adventures. In Sunday’s Child, Serena Katt interrogates Opa’s version of his life. Was it really so innocent? Did he really not know what the Nazis were doing? He joined the Hitler Youth at the age of ten, swearing an oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer. From then on the games he played were actually military training, designed to produce a ‘new German youth ... violent, domineering, unafraid, cruel ... which the world will fear’. At seventeen, in the final desperate days of the war, he is called up but his luck holds. He is sent home and thus survives the war. Sunday’s Child marks the debut of a remarkable graphic novelist. Serena Katt’s book is powerful, eloquent and moving, and her drawing is superb.