Against the odds - Marjolijn Hof

An extraordinary and prize-winning novel about a young girl's response to her aid-worker father's disappearance in a war zone.

Kiki's father, a doctor, is always putting himself in danger by going off to faraway war zones. No matter how much she tries to convince him not to go, Kiki can't persuade him to stay. When her father actually does go missing, and as her mother and grandmother get more and more upset, Kiki begins to feel that it's up to her to save him.

In trying to fix things, Kiki almost commits a terrible and irrevocable act. But a kind man saves her from it and brings her to an understanding of the consequences of what she almost did.

A powerful, sad, yet funny book about what to do when something you've always feared seems to be becoming all too real.

While this book deals with big moral issues in a very serious way, it is also very funny and deeply human. Everyone in it is complex, multi-faceted and lovable. It is an extraordinarily well-written, compassionate and compelling book about how to come to grips with life and the things we fear might happen without sacrificing the best of ourselves.

Marjolijn Hof, formerly a children's librarian, always dreamed of being a writer. When her first novel, Against the Odds (Een kleine kans), was published, it was met with high critical acclaim, winning three major Dutch and Flemish children's book prizes - the Golden Owl Juvenile Literature Prize, the Golden Owl Young Readers' Prize and the Golden Slate Pencil - and it has been translated into at least nine languages. Marjolijn Hof has been praised for her ability to evoke emotions in very few words.