Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
''Lloyd Jones brings to life the transformative power of fiction . . . This is a beautiful book'' Sunday Times
''You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.''
Bougainville, 1991. A small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific. Eighty-six days have passed since Matilda''s last day of school as, quietly, war is encroaching from the other end of the island.
When the villagers'' safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville''s children are surprised to find the island''s only white man, a recluse, re-opening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens. Matilda and the others think a foreigner is coming to the island and prepare a
