Michael Nicholson OBE

'It begins in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, a city held captive by the Serbs, then in its fourth month of siege. Its three hundred thousand inhabitants are being whittled down by lack of food and a relentless bombardment as they witness the systematic destruction of their city and the ethnic cleansing of their country. The world watches too and does nothing.'

It is amidst this violence and destruction that war correspondent Michael Nicholson discovers two hundred children living, unprotected and isolated, in an orphanage on the outskirts of Sarajevo. Among them is Natasha.

A bond rapidly forms between the nine-year-old girl and Nicholson. Following the impulse of his heart and crossing the bounds of journalistic detachment, he makes the courageous decision which will alter Natasha's life and his own; risking arrest and imprisonment, he forges her name into his passport and smuggles her back to England.

There, the little girl, who has only known suffering and deprivation, begins to experience the warmth and comfort of a family environment previously denied to her. Yet her courage will again be put to the test: the prospect of learning a new language and of assimilating an alien culture are doubly daunting for a child whose future remains uncertain.

Both a heartbreaking dispatch from a Balkan tragedy that has left 150,000 dead and the greatest movement of refugees since the Second World War, and an extraordinary human tale, Natasha's Story is an eloquent and fascinating book for our times.