Kensuke's Kingdom

he was keeping me alive, but he was also keeping me prisoner

Now I understood. It was a map of the island. When it was done he fell on his knees beside it, and piled up mounds of sand, one at each end – the two hills. Then, very deliberately, he etched out a straight line, top to bottom, cutting the smaller end of the island off from the larger one.

The next morning, after a breakfast of fish and jackfruit and coconut

old man’s part

tried fishing in the shallows

gesticulating wildly with his stick

This whole body was shaking with fury

brown skin lay in folds about him, almost as if he’d shrunk inside it. What little hair he had on his head and his chin was long and wispy and white.
I could see at once that he was very agitated, his chin trembling, his heavily hooded eyes accusing and angry

He was diminutive, no taller than me, and as old a man as I had ever seen. He wore nothing but a pair of tattered breeches bunched at the waist, and there was a large knife in his belt. He was thin, too. In places – under his arms, round his neck and his midriff – his copper

Our new home