
'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 & the angry-looking man called Hitler seem a million miles away from Norwegian-born Lise & her siblings. Then one day, her friends & neighbours start to disappear, & 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 & 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 & 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