The Prisoner of Bhopal

Tim Walker was born in Nottingham and lives with his wife and their black and white cat in rural Kent. He turned to writing following a career as a graphic designer and is the author of three previous children’s novels – Shipley Manor The Flying Fizzler and Rise of the Rattler. When not in his garden shed either writing or staring at the horses in the field beyond he can be found teaching academic skills at the University of Kent – where he is a former Royal Literary Fund Fellow – visiting one of his three grown-up children or huffing and puffing around his local tennis court. Amil has always dreamed of working at the modern space-age pesticide plant in Bhopal India where he lives. Instead on his tenth birthday he is torn from his family and taken to work for Mr Kumar and his cruel son Jalesh in their dilapidated printing factory. There hidden in a trunk he finds a secret First World War journal. As its pages come to life they reveal not only why Amil is there but that he and the journal’s author – his great-grandfather Sanjiv - share a magical gift: they can read the wind. Its purpose remains a mystery until one terrible night the pesticide plant leaks poison gas into the air above Bhopal . . . Important moving and brilliantly paced this is a book that will stay with me for a very long time. Amil is both brave and adorable and his story is engrossing devastating and so necessary. Utterly transporting and cleverly woven I loved the touches of magic and the poetry of the wind