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, and a nurse, Anna Katschenka, Steve Sem-Sandberg, the author of the award-winning The Emperor of Lies, explores the very meaning of survival.

Vienna's Am Spiegelgrund clinic was apparently well-intentioned: both a reform school and a clinic for ill children. However, it became a monstrous parody of the institution's benign-sounding brief, as instructed by the Nazi regime's euthanasia programme, devised to eliminate 'physically, mentally and racially inferior stock'. Through the eyes of an inmate and a nurse, Steve Sem-Sandberg, author of the award-winning The Emperor of Lies, explores an intolerable chapter in Austria's past.