The novel tells the story of Matilda, a young girl living on the island of Bougainville, in the Pacific, amid a civil war in the early 1990s. Her father has emigrated, her mother endures the pain of his absence, and the local school has been closed because of the conflict.
Amid the ruins emerges Mr. Watts, a white man who decides to stay, reopen the school, and introduce the children to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The power of imagination and of literary storytelling becomes, for Matilda, a refuge, a guide—something as real as the tangible world. The narrative voice contrasts what happens in the outer world with what takes place within: fears, absences, memories, hopes.
It is a book that not only entertains but uplifts. It reflects on the transformative power of books, on education, on courage in the face of adversity, and on human dignity amid disaster. It contains moments of pain but also of beauty—in the way it describes flora and landscape, in its silences, in the light that still filters through dark times.