The Boy at the Top of the Mountain

Europe, 1935. After the deaths of his parents, seven-year-old Pierrot is sent from Paris to live with his aunt Beatrix, a servant at Adolf Hitler’s mountain residence, the Berghof. Renamed Pieter and drawn into the routines of the household, he discovers that proximity to power brings attention, privilege and danger.

Hitler gradually exerts a personal and ideological influence over the lonely boy. Pierrot learns to suppress his earlier loyalties, repeat Nazi beliefs and use his position against others, including people who try to protect him. The novel follows the corruption of a child within Hitler’s domestic circle and the consequences after the Third Reich collapses, emphasising how belonging, fear and ambition can make an ordinary person complicit in persecution.