Carrie's War: 50th Anniversary Luxury Edition

Description

WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY EMMA CARROLL 'A touching, utterly convincing book' JACQUELINE WILSON 'What a deep, dark, deceptively simple, brilliant novel it is' EMMA CARROLL 'Poignant and realistic . . . Carrie's War captures the true reality of war for a child, and it doesn't sentimentalise war' SHIRLEY HUGHES, GUARDIAN 'I did a dreadful thing, the worst thing of my life, when I was twelve and a half years old, and nothing can change it' When the bombs rain down on London, Carrie and her little brother Nick are evacuated to a small town in the Welsh hills. Without their mother, and away from anything familiar, they must take refuge among strangers. Reluctantly, Mr Evans, the grocer, takes them in, with his kind, timid sister, Aunt Lou. But the children find little comfort in his austere home. Their fellow evacuee, Albert, is luckier, living in a rambling old mansion with Hepzibah Green and Mister Johnny. Hepzibah is rumoured to be a witch, but the children feel safe in her warm kitchen and are spellbound by her stories. Just as Carrie and Nick begin to settle into their new life, something happens that tests their loyalties: will they be persuaded to betray their friends? ILLUSTRATED BY ALAN MARKS

Nina Bawden (1925-2012) was one of Britain's best-loved writers for both adults and children. Several of her children's books - Carrie's War, a Phoenix Award winner; The Peppermint Pig which won the Guardian Fiction Award; and Keeping Henry - have become contemporary classics. She wrote over forty novels, slightly more than half of which are for adults, and she was shortlisted for the 1987 Man Booker Prize for Circles of Deceit. She received the prestigious S. T. Dupont Golden Pen Award for a lifetime's contribution to literature in 2004 and in 2010 The Birds on the Trees was shortlisted for the Lost Booker of 1970.

A poignant and realistic picture of what the second world war was like for a child . . . Carrie's War captures the true reality of war for a child, and it doesn't sentimentalise war * Guardian * A very touching, utterly convincing book about three wartime evacuees billeted to Wales. It's very much a children's story, with a mystery to be solved, but Nina Bawden is very subtle with her characterisation - even hateful Mr Evans with his cruel bullying is seen as sadly pathetic too. Carrie and her little brother Nick are a delight, but my favourite character is their friend Albert Sandwich. He might sport steel spectacles and have a few spots on his chin, but he's one of the most charming boys in all children's fiction * Jacqueline Wilson * Delicately done, full of accurate and unsentimental understanding * Sunday Telegraph * Perhaps the best of Nina Bawden's excellent novels * Sunday Times * Always an important book, but even more so now with the refugee and asylum seeker crisis that brings the book new relevance -- Michael Morpurgo * Sunday Times * What a deep, dark, deceptively simple, brilliant novel it is -- Emma Carroll