After hearing Ken Catran in our own library last term, I was pretty keen to read his latest book. It's not a book I'd recommend to junior readers as it has some harrowing accounts of World War 2. The novel is in fact three short novels in one collection. The first tale deals with British fighter pilots who lead the bombing raids that wiped out German cities at the end of WW2. The second deals with the memories of a nurse who was held in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Singapore. The last tale is the story of a Nazi prison guard who managed to escape to NZ but who lives with the ghosts of his past.
Each story has a teenage character who acts as the starting point for the narrative.
Ken spoke to us about how he researches his work and the details in these stories are based on the factual accounts of survivors- the realism is startling at times.
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