It is 1945. As the German Army retreats and the tide of war sweeps back over Eastern Europe, the lives of the inhabitants are changed forever. For with that political change comes an ideological one which swamps the existing order. In one castle near the Czechoslovakian border, the aristocratic heritage of ten generations or more is brushed aside by the arrival of Communist troops, and the family of Count Michael must join the flood of refugees if they are to survive. A Desert In Bohemia is the story of the forty years between that moment until the fall of Communism at the end of the 1980s, the story of that family uprooted, and the ties of trust, friendship, duty which bound them and a community together broken down by the implacably irresolvable forces involved. Told through the eyes of eight characters who live through and observe those forty years, A Desert In Bohemia is a bravura piece of storytelling, thrillingly human, yet philosophically complex, which confirms Jill Paton Walsh as one of the most challenging and compelling writers working today. (Preceeding text couretsy www.randomhouse.co.nz) Paperback