This book traces the figure of the lost child in Australia's history and imagination.

NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “An epic road trip [that also] captures the unruly intimacies of marriage and parenthood ... This is a novel that daylights our common humanity, and challenges us to reconcile our differences.” —The Washington Post In Valeria Luiselli’s fiercely imaginative follow-up to the American Book Award-winning Tell Me How It Ends, an artist couple set out with their two children on a road trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. As the family travels west, the bonds between them begin to fray: a fracture is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet. Through ephemera such as songs, maps and a Polaroid camera, the children try to make sense of both their family’s crisis and the larger one engulfing the news: the stories of thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States but getting detained—or lost in the desert along the way. A breath-taking feat of literary virtuosity, Lost Children Archive is timely, compassionate, subtly hilarious, and formally inventive—a powerful, urgent story about what it is to be human in an inhuman world.

World War II tore apart an unprecedented number of families. This is the heartbreaking story of the humanitarian organizations, governments, and refugees that tried to rehabilitate Europe’s lost children from the trauma of war, and in the process shaped Cold War ideology, ideals of democracy and human rights, and modern visions of the family.

IIn 1973, a young ACLU attorney filed a controversial class-action lawsuit that challenged New York City’s operation of its foster-care system. The plaintiff was an abused runaway named Shirley Wilder who had suffered from the system’s inequities. Wilder, as the case came to be known, was waged for two and a half decades, becoming a battleground for the conflicts of race, religion, and politics that shape America’s child-welfare system. The Lost Children of Wilder gives us the galvanizing history of this landmark case and the personal story at its core. Nina Bernstein takes us behind the scenes of far-reaching legal and legislative battles, but she also traces the life of Shirley Wilder and her son, Lamont, born when Shirley was only fourteen and relinquished to the very system being challenged in her name. Bernstein’s account of Shirley and Lamont’s struggles captures the heartbreaking consequences of the child welfare system’s best intentions and deepest flaws. In the tradition of There Are No Children Here, this is a major achievement of investigative journalism and a tour de force of social observation, a gripping book that will haunt every reader who cares about the needs of children.

Describes how the author's three-month service as a volunteer at the Little Princes Orphanage in war-torn Nepal became a commitment for advocacy and reform when he discovered that many of his young charges were victims rescued from human traffickers.

This book is an extensive study of the figure of the lost child in English-speaking and European literature and culture. It argues that the lost child figure is of profound importance for our society, a symptom as well as a cause of deep trauma. This trauma, or void, is a fundamental disruption of the structures that define us: self, history, and even language. This puts the figure of the child in context with previous research that the modern conception of ‘a child’ was formed alongside modern conceptions of memory. The book analyses the representation of the lost child, through fairy tales, historical oppression and in recent novels and films. The book then studies the connection of the lost child figure with the uncanny and its centrality to language. The book considers the lost child figure as an archetype on a metaphysical and philosophical level as well as cultural.

Voices of the Lost Children of Greece is a collection of essays from Greek-born adoptees in the 1950s after two consecutive wars that ravaged the country. Never before has this group of adoptees come together to write their stories and share their closely held feelings. While many of the adoptees have similar experiences and while they may share some common thoughts about their adoptions, their stories are vastly different, some harrowing, others remarkable. The collection will illustrate the impact of adoption itself over years, no matter if children were displaced from their parents and country as infants or as youngsters. The book will shed light on adoption from many disciplinary angles, including sociological, psychological and anthropological. It will also put these adoptions into a larger historical context. The book is further enhanced by Greek-born adoptee, academic, poet and writer, Dr. Andrew Mossin, who writes the Foreword; by Dr. Gonda Van Steen, a preeminent modern Greek scholar, who pens the first chapter about the history of such adoptions; and in the final chapter, by Dr. Eirini Papadaki, who has written extensively about the women of Greece and adoption, to bring readers a current assessment of adoption practices in Greece today.

Originally published in 1989. The extraordinary story of Britain’s child migrants is one of 350 years of shaming exploitation. Around 130,000 children, some just 3 or 4 years old, were shipped off to distant parts of the Empire, the last as recently as 1967. For Britain it was a cheap way of emptying children’s homes and populating the colonies with ‘good British stock’; for the colonies it was a source of cheap labour. Even after the Second World War around 10,000 children were transported to Australia – where many were subjected to at best uncaring abandonment, and at worst a regime of appalling cruelty. Lost Children of the Empire tells the remarkable story of the Child Migrants Trust, set up in 1987, to trace families and to help those involved to come to terms with what has happened. But nothing can explain away the connivance and irresponsibility of the governments and organisations involved in this inhuman chapter of British history.

Can two orphans who only have each other survive a world at war when they discover the shocking truth of their past? England, 1943: Eight-year-old twins Molly and Jacob are no longer safe at home. Night after night wailing bombs and screeching planes skim the rooftops overhead. With no other choice, their mother, Martha, sends them to the safety of the countryside--but not without passing on a dangerous secret. Fearful of never seeing her children again, Martha gives Jacob a letter, telling him to only read it if they are in danger. In the country, Molly and Jacob struggle to adjust to life with strangers. But then the unimaginable happens. An explosion kills Martha, leaving the twins all alone in the world. Faced with the grim reality of life in an orphanage, the time has come for Jacob to honor his mother's last wish. But are its secrets enough to change the course of their tragic fate? Because Jacob believes that so long he and Molly are together, they can survive anything. And the letter may be what tears them apart.

FAIRYTALES FOR LOST CHILDREN is narrated by people constantly on the verge of self-revelation. These characters - young, gay and lesbian Somalis - must navigate the complexities of family, identity and the immigrant experience as they tumble towards freedom. Set in Kenya, Somalia and South London, these stories are imbued with pathos, passion and linguistic playfulness, marking the arrival of a singular new voice in contemporary fiction. Praise for FAIRYTALES FOR LOST CHILDREN: 'Fantastic writing. I am most highly impressed. I've read some of the stories more than once and saw in each of them plenty of talent everywhere - in every sinew and vein.' - NURUDDIN FARAH 'There is nothing more humbling than good writing except when the author is fiercely beautiful and ferociously generous of heart. That Diriye Osman should possess so much talent is only fair in light of his goodness. Read this book.' - MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO -The characters in these fairy tales are displaced in multiple, complicated ways. But Osman's storytelling creates a shelter for them; a warm place which is both real and imaginary, in which they find political, sexual, and ultimately psychic liberation.' - ALISON BECHDEL 'East Africa. South London. Queer. Displaced. Mentally Ill. My excitement over Osman and his writing comes, in part, out of delight at the impossibility of categorisation.' - ELLAH ALLFREY The Telegraph