Rose Blanche

Description

An important and unforgettable story, brilliantly re-told by Booker Prize-winner Ian McEwan. Rose Blanche was the name of a group of young German citizens who, at their peril, protested against the war. Like them, Rose observes all the changes going on around her which others choose to ignore. She watches as the streets of her small German town fill with soldiers. One day she sees a little boy escaping from the back of a truck, only to be captured by the mayor and shoved back into it. Rose follows the truck to a desolate place out of town, where she discovers many other children, staring hungrily from behind an electric barbed wire fence. She starts bringing the children food, instinctively sensing the need for secrecy, even with her mother. Until the tide of the war turns and soldiers in different uniforms stream in from the East, and Rose and the imprisoned children disappear...

Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen. Roberto Innocenti was born in 1940 in Bagno a Ripoli, a small town near Florence. Never having attended art school, he went to Rome to work in an animation studio. Returning to Florence, he began designing books and illustrating film and theatre posters. He has illustrated Pinocchio, A Christmas Carol, J. Patrick Lewis's The Last Resort and Ruth Vander Zee's Erika's Story. He lives in Florence with his wife.

Offers the consolation, that goodness, even when unrecorded, is still worth celebrating -- Amanda Craig * The Times * Illustrated wth extraordinary, haunting pictures -- Rebecca Abrams * Daily Telegraph * A modern fairy tale that does not flinch at reality -- Quentin Blake * Independent * Bleak but rewarding * The School Librarian *