新西蘭作傢Lloyd Jones今年的新作，用一句話概括整個小說，它是一則天真而殘酷的寓言。

故事發生在太平洋的一個島嶼上，紅毛軍(redskins)與造反者rebels之間內戰紛起，島上居民終日生活在戰爭帶來的不安和惶恐中，白人們都早早舉傢撤離，唯有Mr.Watts，為陪伴他的土著妻子Grace，留瞭下來，替代成為孩子們的老師。小說通過十三歲的女孩Matilda之口進行敘述，狄更斯的小說Great Expectations《遠大前程》是這部作品的核心。一開始，Mr.Watts將它作為課本，每天上課朗讀一章，在聆聽的過程中，主人公Mister Pip和他的世界，深深攫住瞭孩子們的心，文字的虛構變成瞭某種真實的存在。

突然有一天，戰爭的殘酷侵入這天真的幻想裏。野蠻的紅毛軍闖入村子，逼他們交齣造反者Mister Pip，偏偏此時，這本小說離奇失蹤，遍尋不獲。紅毛軍一怒之下，把村民的房屋、裏麵的物品，燒瞭個一乾二淨，包括那本被藏起來的Great Expectations。在他們再度進村搜索Mister Pip時，Matilda目睹瞭最獸性的殘殺。這一部分的描寫，語言齣奇的冷靜不動聲色，見齣作者的功力，令人難忘。

失去母親的Matilda，被營救齣島嶼，與在澳大利亞打工的父親團聚。重新迴到學校的她，在圖書館找到一本Great Expectations，卻發現Mr.Watts並沒有完全照著狄更斯的故事來講，她選擇狄更斯為自己論文的論題，可隨著對作者、作品的深入，她失望的發現，原來很多東西與想象的並不一樣，原來需要的潤飾的不是文學，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.”）

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.