A powerful post-nuclear holocaust novel described by the author as, 'my cry against the monstrous weapons men have made'. Everyone thought, when the alarm bell rang, that it was just another fire practice.

But the first bombs had fallen on Hamburg and Leningrad, the headmaster said, and a full-scale nuclear attack was imminent . . . It's a real-life nightmare. Sarah and her family have to stay cooped up in the tightly-sealed kitchen for days on end, dreading the inevitable radioactive fall-out and the subsequent slow, torturous death, which seems almost preferable to surviving in a grey, dead world, choked by dust. But then, from out of the dust and the ruins and the desolation, comes new life, a new future, and a whole brave new world...