A good find

One of my favourite books ever is Die Wolke by Gudrun Pausewang. I've studied it with A level groups and in a sense it is partly the memories it evokes of good times with great classes that makes it so important to me. But I do love the story and it has been a bit of a disappointment that it is not one I can share with many people. However, whilst browsing on Amazon, I came across this:

The original is called The Cloud in German and is all about a fictitious Chernobyl style accident at a nuclear power station in Germany. A young girl and her brother, whose parents are out of town at a conference, have to decide whether to hide out in the cellar, or try to run from the fall-out. It is one of those novels which depicts people at their most selfish, and some at their most selfless, when the survival instinct kicks in.

Anyway, I ordered it so that Tom and Anni could read it. A good sign that a book is going down well with Anni is when I go in to see her before I go to bed and she pretends to be asleep. I say, "Where's the book?" and she breaks into a huge grin and passes it me from somewhere under the covers. That's what happened the first night after this book arrived.

I noted that there were 11 second hand copies on Amazon. Another dark tale for book club methinks!