Excerpt from Little Bee by Chris Cleave, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I turned round to face her and I gripped on to the door frame.

I cant move, I said.

That is when Yevette gave me a great push in the chest and I flew backward. And that is how it was, the first time I touched the soil of England as a free woman, it was not with the soles of my boots but with the seat of my trousers.

WU-ha-ha-ha! said Yevette. Welcome in de U-nited Kindom, int dat glorious?

When I got my breath back I started laughing too. I sat on the ground, with the warm sun shining on my back, and I realized that the earth had not rejected me and the sunlight had not snapped me in two.

I stood up and I smiled at Yevette. We all took a few steps away from the detention center buildings. As we walked, when the other girls were not looking, I reached under my Hawaiian shirt and I undid the band of cotton that held my breasts strapped down. I unwound it and threw it on the ground and ground it into the dirt with the heel of my boot. I breathed deeply in the fresh, clean air.

When we came to the main gate, the four of us girls stopped for a moment. We looked out through the high razor-wire fence and down the slopes of Black Hill. The English countryside stretched away to the horizon. Soft mist was hanging in the valleys, and the tops of the low hills were gold in the morning sun, and I smiled because the whole world was fresh and new and bright.

Copyright 2008 by Chris Cleave. Originally published as The Other Hand in Great Britain in 2008 by Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton.