LoveReading4Kids Says
LoveReading4Kids Says
Set in the Indian city of Bhopal in 1984, the date of the deadly leak at the Union Carbide plant, Tim Walker’s story is about much more than that terrible catastrophe. Equally important to the story are the experiences of the main character, ten-year-old Amil’s great-grandfather, an Indian soldier gassed in the trenches of the First World War. Readers come to understand too something of the caste system, the lives of the poor in India and of its young women.
Amil is cruelly separated from his parents on his birthday and, as reparation for perceived family debt, sent to work for Mr Kumar, the owner of a printing company, failing due to his laziness and poor management. Locked in the printing shed every night, Amil discovers his great-grandfather’s journal and from it learns how to interpret the wind. Can he use this near-magical new ability to save his friends and neighbours as the poisonous cloud pours out of the factory?
The story is gripping, the different storylines skilfully woven together, the pictures painted of Amil and his friend, Kumar’s daughter Chunni, particularly vivid and moving. It will prompt questions and give young readers new insight into past events and other lives.
Andrea Reece
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About
The Prisoner of Bhopal Synopsis
An astonishing and engrossing novel, based on a true story, which commemorates the 40th anniversary of the world’s worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, India
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 . . .
£1 from each copy sold will be donated by Andersen Press to the Bhopal Medical Appeal
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781839133732 |
| Publication date: |
7th March 2024 |
| Author: |
Tim Walker |
| Publisher: |
Andersen Press Ltd |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
272 pages |
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Press Reviews
Tim Walker Press Reviews
'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' - Hiba Noor Khan
'A beautifully written and wonderful book' - Annie Murray, Author and Bhopal Medical Appeal Trustee
Author
About Tim Walker
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.
More About Tim Walker
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A note from the author:
"In 1984, as a young graphic designer, I was given a photograph of an Indian farmer and instructed to arrange it alongside some text for the back of a pesticide leaflet. The client was Union Carbide, and the leaflet was for a pesticide similar to the one manufactured in the company’s plant in Bhopal, India. Whilst completing my layout task, the Bhopal disaster – in which poison gas was released into the air killing thousands of the city’s residents – was announced over the radio, and I was told to stop work. The events of that day stuck with me, and inspired me to write about it decades later. It was the first time I realised that companies could (and still do) put profits before the health and safety of people. My book is intended to bring this issue, and the disaster that exemplifies it, to the attention of a new generation of children in the only way I know how: by telling a story." - Tim Walker
