A book for children

In the heyday of the Victorian era, children's author Olive Wellwood tells fairy tales for her seven children. If told convincingly enough, no one will guess what family tragedies lie behind stories about children descending into the underworld in search of a stolen shadow, what betrayals and mysteries hide behind stories about magical, shape-shifting beasts. Elsewhere, almost out of sight, colonial conquests and revolutions simmer, but in a charming corner of good old England, untouched by the storms of history, a golden age continues and no one suspects that a great war is approaching. Colorful characters in the large-scale family saga of Booker Prize laureate A. S. Bayett experience cultural and historical shifts from the end of the Victorian era to the First World War. It was a bright period, when the struggle for the rights of women and the underprivileged classes was raging, and empires seemed eternal, when the arts were taken seriously, belief in magic was intertwined with social rationality, and adults enthusiastically read children's books.