I took hold of the fence and pressed my face into the wire, asking myself what I had done to be made a prisoner?'On the Indonesian island of Java, eight-year-old Lise enjoys a happy childhood, thousands of miles away from the war raging in Europe. Then, one day in 1942, her friends and neighbours start to disappear.For two years Lise and her family were imprisoned in POW camps, enduring starvation, illness and brutal treatment at the hands of their Japanese captors. But despite the cruelty and suffering, they never gave up hope. This is a remarkable true story of courage and survival, told through the eyes of a little girl who, even in the darkest depths of war, was able to look beyond the barbed wire, to a time when she would be free. 'Unflinching . . . a devastating portrayal of a child's loss of innocence to humiliating cruelty'
Observer