Keith Maguire
This is an astonishingly rich and evocative book. It seems to contain so much more that the words could possibly hold.
It's a heart-breaking account of the experiences and the aftermath of being a prisoner of war for an Australian soldier on the Burma railway. The accounts of the conditions for the prisoners of war are extremely harrowing. The experiences are recounted in the context of a lifetime, with the time in captivity as well as characters' lives before and after plaited into a constantly shifting narrative perspective. Try to read as little as possible about it before starting - any plot summaries I've read vastly over-simplify what is happening.
This is an astonishingly rich and evocative book. It seems to contain so much more that the words could possibly hold.
It's a heart-breaking account of the experiences and the aftermath of being a prisoner of war for an Australian soldier on the Burma railway. The accounts of the conditions for the prisoners of war are extremely harrowing. The experiences are recounted in the context of a lifetime, with the time in captivity as well as characters' lives before and after plaited into a constantly shifting narrative perspective. Try to read as little as possible about it before starting - any plot summaries I've read vastly over-simplify what is happening.