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'1942: It was towards the middle of the year when my friends started disappearing...' On the island of Java, the stirrings of the Second World War in Europe and the angry-looking man called Hitler seem a million miles away from Norwegian-born Lise and her siblings. Then one day, her friends and neighbours start to disappear, and she begins to realise that they are not safe after all. Through ten-year-old eyes, Lise tells of her family's two-year imprisonment in POW camps and the brutal treatment received at the hands of their Japanese captors. For respite from the rat-infested floor of their shelter they adopt a blue door, which sits on concrete posts in the ground. They live on it during the day as young Lise plots ways to protect her family from disease, starvation and the desperate behaviour of fellow prisoners. This is a little girl's heartbreaking tale of survival. 'A devastating portrayal of a child's loss of innocence to humiliating cruelty' Observer * The Blue Door is published in paperback as The Little Captive. (less)

'1942: It was towards the middle of the year when my friends started disappearing...' On the island of Java, the stirrings of the Second World War in Europe and the angry-looking man called Hitler seem a million miles away from Norwegian-born (…more)