Lost Boys

by JamesMiller (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.49

  After the oil company that employs Arthur Dashwood fails to protect him from a kidnap attempt in Baghdad, he returns to his traumatised family in London. But everything is not as it should be. Having quit the blistering heat and swimming pool luxury of Saudi Arabia for fear of terrorist attack, Arthur finds that danger is closer to home. Arthur's young son Timothy is struggling in the hostile terrain of his new public school. Bullied by other pupils and neglected by his preoccupied parents, he withdraws into a fantasy world, a hybrid of computer-generated guerrilla warzone and exotic dreams of his time in Saudi Arabia, a place where boys can fight and escape their teachers and families. As one middle-class boy from Timothy's school and then another disappears, so evidence emerges of an extreme and disturbing rejection of the adult world. And then it is Timothy's turn to disappear. Haunted by memories of post-Saddam Baghdad, Arthur embarks on a terrifying search for his son, one that will reveal his own complicity in the brutal consequences of Western power.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.78

  Forgive me, he sobbed, the tears falling now. He saw them, huddled under the damp trees, faces hidden with scarves and masks. Waiting.' All over London, affluent and privileged boys are going missing from their homes and schools. Investigations into the disappearances uncover a world of extreme and disturbing fantasy, a violent rejection of all that society values. A father, haunted by his experiences in Iraq, searches for his lost son in the seedy underside of the city. Through a series of fearful revelations, his complicity in the brutal effects of the so-called civilised West. Shocking and controversial, LOST BOYS sheds light on the secret fears and desires that drive children and adults, families and society. Drawing disconcerting parallels between the childhood resistance to adulthood and the War on Terror, LOST BOYS is an unsettling and unforgettable novel from a major new talent in contemporary fiction.