It is 1941. The horror and chaos of the London bombings are at a peak. Children are being evacuated in droves to the relative security of the English countryside.

One day an unlisted little boy is left on a train platform in Gloucestershire. He says his name is Simon Thorn, but he bears no ID and the few fragments he can provide of his past lead nowhere. But a childless couple is overjoyed to take him in, and he begins a happy new life as Simon Cutheridge. Only now and then he whimpers in his sleep and cries out, “Please stop it. Don’t hit her! Don’t kill her!”

Fifteen quiet years pass, and Simon is in London on holiday from Oxford. Wandering among the grimy, early nineteenth-century houses in Paddington, he spies an old door with a low-set knocker he dimly recognizes. The way to re-discovery suddenly opens.

OUT OF THE BLACKOUT is one of Robert Barnard’s most unusual and memorable novels, a moving and terrifying tale of psychological suspense.