The Am Spiegelgrund clinic, in glittering Vienna, masqueraded as a well-intentioned reform school for wayward boys & girls & a home for chronically ill children. The reality, however, was very different: in the wake of Germany`s annexation of Austria on the eve of World War Two, its doctors, nurses, & teachers created a monstrous parody of the institution`s benign-sounding brief. The Nazi regime`s euthanasia program would come to determine the fate of many of the clinic`s inhabitants. Through the eyes of a child inmate, Adrian Ziegler, & a nurse, Anna Katschenka, Steve Sem-Sandberg, the author of the award-winning The Emperor of Lies, explores the very meaning of survival. An absorbing, emotionally overwhelming novel, rich in incident & character, The Chosen Ones is obliquely illuminated by the author`s sharp sense of the absurd. Passionately serious, meticulously researched, & deeply profound, this extraordinary & dramatic novel bears witness to oppression & injustice, & offers invaluable & necessary insight on an intolerable chapter in Austria`s past.