| Postcards from No Man's Land | |
| Author: | Aidan Chambers |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | Dance Sequence |
| Genre: | Young adult fiction, war novel |
| Publisher: | The Bodley Head |
| Pub Date: | 7 January 1999 |
| Media Type: | Print (paperback) |
| Pages: | 336 pp (first edition) |
| Isbn: | 0-370-32376-9 |
| Oclc: | 477161980 |
| Congress: | PZ7.C3557 Po 2002[1] |
| Preceded By: | The Toll Bridge |
Postcards from No Man's Land is a young-adult novel by Aidan Chambers, published by Bodley Head in 1999. Two stories are set in Amsterdam during 1994 and 1944. One features 17-year-old visitor Jacob Todd during the 50-year commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem, in which his grandfather fought; the other features 19-year-old Geertrui late in the German occupation of the Netherlands.[2] It was the fifth of six novels in the series Chambers calls "The Dance Sequence", which he inaugurated in 1978 with Breaktime.[3]
Chambers won the annual Carnegie Medal, from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. In 2001 The Guardian named it one of ten books recommended for teenage boys, and called it a "seriously good and compulsively readable novel that spans 50 years and two interwoven stories of love, betrayal and self-discovery".[4] Postcards from No Man's Land was first published in the U.S. by Dutton in 2002.[1] There it won the Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association recognising the year's best book for young adults.[5] [6]
WorldCat reports that Postcards is the work by Chambers most widely held in participating libraries, by a wide margin.
One library catalogue record recommends Postcards for American "senior high school" students and the British librarians call it a "sophisticated book for older teenagers. Issues of euthanasia and sexual identity are raised. This is an emotionally and intellectually challenging book and one that lingers in the mind."