The Second World War is over, but for an East End teenage brother and sister life has been suspended. Sent away to a tuberculosis sanatorium in Kent, they find themselves in the company of army officers, a young university graduate, a mysterious German woman, a member of the aristocracy and an American merchant seaman. They discover that a cure is tantalisingly just out of reach and only by inciting wholesale rebellion can freedom be snatched. By an Orange Prize-winning and Man Booker-shortlisted author.