Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Mister Pip is quite simply one of the greatest novels of our time. Matilda lives on an island in the Pacific-but this is no paradise. Civil war is a fact of life and the school is closed. But then Mr Watts, the only white man on the island, steps forward to do what he can to help. He begins by reading Great Expectations aloud to his students, a chapter a day. While the lives of Pip and Magwitch and other Dickens characters are transformed in their new tropical setting, the locals come to the schoolhouse to tell their own tales-about the meaning of the colour blue, about broken dreams, black birds and devil women. In Matilda's eyes, Pip is as real as any living person. He has become her friend. She writes his name in the sand and decorates it with shells. That's where the redskin soldiers see it, and decide they must track this stranger down. Who is this Mr Pip? The search to find him will have devastating consequences for Matilda, Mr Watts and the entire village. Mister Pip is a novel about the power of the imagination and of storytelling. It is about loyalty, betrayal, grief, love and memory. Lloyd Jones was born in 1955 in Lower Hutt in New Zealand and graduated from Victoria University. He has worked as a journalist and covered Papua New Guinea's blockade of Bougainville during the 1990s, which formed the setting for his bestselling Mister Pip. Jones has received awards including the Katherine Mansfield Memorial fellowship (1988), the Deutz Medal for Fiction, the Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize (2003) and the Montana New Zealand Book Award (2001). In 2008 he received the New Zealand Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement. His latest book is Hand Me Down World. 'Mister Pip is a rare, original and truly beautiful novel. It reminds us that every act of reading and telling is a transformation, and that stories, even painful ones, may carry possibilities of redemption.' Gail Jones 'As compelling as a fairytale - beautiful, shocking and profound.' Helen Garner 'Roll the drums. Flourish the trumpets. Release the pigeons. Yes, the fanfare accompanying Lloyd Jones' new novel is well-deserved...It reads like the effortless soar and dip of a grand piece of music, thrilling singular voices, the darker, moving chorus, the blend of the light and shade, the thread of grief urgent in every beat and the occasional faint, lingering note of hope...Jones is matchless...Read this novel and Mr Watts, and perhaps Matilda, will migrate instantly into your heart.' Age 'A poignant and impressive work which can take its place alongside the classic novels of adolescence.' Times Literary Supplement 'Lloyd Jones brings to life the transformative power of fiction...This is a beautiful book, It is tender, multi-layered and redemptive' Sunday Times