still on the children's books: mal peet's tamar is very fine.

from Jan Mark's review in the Guardian

"This is war without heroics, only the daily fortitude and resilience of civilians - particularly women - under the heel of an occupying power that faces defeat in a last vengeful paroxysm of persecution. The enemy is armed with weapons and an implacable ideology, but the continuous battle is against cold and starvation, scarcity of everything from food, to fuel, to medicine, and perpetual grinding fear. One man, isolated, deluded and finally driven out of his mind by the terrible tedium of waiting and by the (then perfectly legal) amphetamine Benzedrine, knows a pain beyond endurance and breaks, catastrophically."