<p>'A powerful and merciless book ? a classic coming-of-age novel' -- Hilary Mantel<br><br>'Wide windows, not yet shuttered at that hour, opened from the circular white-washed room on slopes of olives and the distant shimmering bay. Flavia turned seventeen, alone, entirely alone for the first time in her life . . .'<br><br>As the Second World War looms, Flavia is living in a small village in the South of France. She studies for her Oxford entranc...