Robert Dinsdale

One evening in 1948, Jon Heather’s mother leaves him at Chapeltown Boys’ Home. He is certain she will come back, but just weeks later, he finds himself on a boat set for Australia. Promised paradise, Jon soon realises the reality of the Australian outback is very different. So begins an odyssey, as Jon and his friends battle to make their way back home.

Every night on their long journey to Paris from their troubled homeland, Levon's grandmother has read to them from a very special book. Called The Nocturne, it is a book full of fairy stories and the heroic adventures of their people who generations before chose to live by starlight. And with every story that Levon's grandmother tells them in their new home, the desire to live as their ancestors did grows. And that is when the magic begins...

But not everyone in Paris is won over by the spectacle of Paris-by-Starlight. There are always those that fear the other, the unexplained, the strangers in our midst. How long can the magic of night rub up against the ordinariness of day? How long can two worlds occupy the same streets and squares before there is an outright war?