'If I stood you in front of a man, pressed a gun into your palm and told you to squeeze the trigger, would you do it?'
'No, sir, no way!'
'What if I then told you we'd gone back in time and his name was Adolf Hitler? Would you do it then?'
Zimbabwe, 1980s.
The fighting has stopped, independence has been won and Robert Mugabe has come to power offering the end of the Old Way and promising hope for black Africans.
For Robert Jacklin, it's all new: new continent, new country, new school. And very quickly he learns that for some of his white classmates, the sound of guns is still loud, and their battles rage on.
Boys like Ivan.
Clever, cunning Ivan.
He wants things back to how they were, and he's taking his fight to the very top.
Winner of the Costa, the UKLA and the Branford Boase Awards
