In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives.

On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations.

So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.” Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.

新西兰作家Lloyd Jones今年的新作，用一句话概括整个小说，它是一则天真而残酷的寓言。

故事发生在太平洋的一个岛屿上，红毛军(redskins)与造反者rebels之间内战纷起，岛上居民终日生活在战争带来的不安和惶恐中，白人们都早早举家撤离，唯有Mr.Watts，为陪伴他的土著妻子Grace，留了下来，替代成为孩子们的老师。小说通过十三岁的女孩Matilda之口进行叙述，狄更斯的小说Great Expectations《远大前程》是这部作品的核心。一开始，Mr.Watts将它作为课本，每天上课朗读一章，在聆听的过程中，主人公Mister Pip和他的世界，深深攫住了孩子们的心，文字的虚构变成了某种真实的存在。

突然有一天，战争的残酷侵入这天真的幻想里。野蛮的红毛军闯入村子，逼他们交出造反者Mister Pip，偏偏此时，这本小说离奇失踪，遍寻不获。红毛军一怒之下，把村民的房屋、里面的物品，烧了个一干二净，包括那本被藏起来的Great Expectations。在他们再度进村搜索Mister Pip时，Matilda目睹了最兽性的残杀。这一部分的描写，语言出奇的冷静不动声色，见出作者的功力，令人难忘。

失去母亲的Matilda，被营救出岛屿，与在澳大利亚打工的父亲团聚。重新回到学校的她，在图书馆找到一本Great Expectations，却发现Mr.Watts并没有完全照着狄更斯的故事来讲，她选择狄更斯为自己论文的论题，可随着对作者、作品的深入，她失望的发现，原来很多东西与想象的并不一样，原来需要的润饰的不是文学，而是生活。（”That is when I learned there is a place for embellishment after all. But it belongs to life──not to literature.”）