Film: Ember

Oct 13 2008 by Our Correspondent

DURING the ’50s and ’60s, the spectre of nuclear war loomed large.

Nations were crippled with fear and paranoia, constructing nuclear fallout shelters to sustain the population for months, if not years after an attack.

Jeanne DuPrau expanded the idea of subterranean refuges in her first novel, The City Of Ember, which was eventually published in 2003.

In this first book of an ongoing series, she imagined an entire underground community powered by a massive generator, cocooned from the apocalyptic horrors which befall mankind on the surface.

The human race endures while the planet heals, and in time, survivors hopefully find their way back to the surface.