"The Orphanage." Germany in 1942. Detlev has been placed by his mother in a Catholic orphanage. Here, he tries to make sense of the incomprehensible and inclement world outside. What is an orphan? Who was his father? What became of him? What do the dead look like? The dead killed in battle? The dead after an air raid? Why does God not stretch out a net to stop the bombs from falling? How did Christ suffer on the cross? What is a Jew? The Orphanage is the first of Hubert Fichte's works to be published in English.