
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 familys 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 girls heartbreaking tale of survival. A devastating portrayal of a childs loss of innocence to humiliating cruelty Observer