A little girl in the province of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea becomes mesmerized by the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens as it is being read at school by the only white man in the village. This occurs at the same time that a war is raging in the region. A conflict that broke out in 1991 in the South Pacific over the ownership of a copper mine tore the island of Bougainville in two. Matilda, who is fourteen years old, lives in a small village. The recluse "Popeye" (Hugh Laurie) offers the youngsters of Matilda's town an escape with Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. The dangers of fiction, however, are real on a war-torn island
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A little girl in the province of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea becomes mesmerized by the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens as it is being read at school by the only white man in the village. This occurs at the same time that a war is raging in the region. A conflict that broke out in 1991 in the South Pacific over the ownership of a copper mine tore the island of Bougainville in two. Matilda, who is fourteen years old, lives in a small village. The recluse "Popeye" (Hugh Laurie) offers the youngsters of Matilda's town an escape with Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. The dangers of fiction, however, are real on a war-torn island
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