Dark Hours

A gripping, moving and memorable story set during the last weeks of the Second World War. After fleeing their home and being separated from her grandmother, 16-year-old Gisela is trapped for days with her little brothers and a young girl under the rubble after the bombing of Dresden.

It is February, 1945, in Lower Silesia and Gisela's family is fleeing from the Russian army. They make it to a train station not far from Dresden, but during the journey, Gisela is separated from her pregnant mother. In the hopelessly crowded station the air raid siren goes off and Gisela loses sight of her grandmother, all their belongings and one of her younger brothers.

They survive the air raid, but then realise they are trapped underground with hardly any food or water

'. . .stays long in your memory.'- Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin 22/3/05

'Gudrun Pausewang is not analysing the social conditions - she describes events and doesn't attempt to hide how they came about. This book depicts the everyday life in the war that no child should ever experience again.' - Berliner Zeitung 2/4/05

'A thoroughly gripping book.' - Muenchner Merkur 6/8/05

Gudrun Pausewang is Germany's leading writer for teenagers. She deals with political issues and is an activist herself, passionately committed to the struggle for human rights and a better world.

Translator: John Brownjohn is one of Britain's foremost translators from French and German. His work has won numerous awards on both sides of the Atlantic, including the US PEN Prize, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize, and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize on three occasions. He has been much praised for his deft and elegant use of language: seamless and idiomatic, without a single clumsy construction, It's a remarkable achievement to sustain a breakneck pace and never once sound as if the book were written in anything other than English.' John is the translator of Lilli Thal's Mimus, recently published by Allen & Unwin.

Dark Wraith of Shannara
Allen & Unwin
Author: John Brownjohn
ISBN: 9781741149210
RRP: $16.95