Friday 19 December 2014

Shame and the Captives by Thomas Keneally

This fantastic novelization of the Japanese Prisoner of War breakout from Cowra prisoner of war camp in Australia is one of the best books I've read this year.  Keneally, through extensive and acknowledged research gets in the minds and thought processes of these inscrutable men and their culture of war, especially in regards to the shame of capture.  The narrative also includes Alice, who is living on her husband's farm with her father in law, while her husband is interred in a camp in Germany, and her relationship with Giancarlo, an Italian prisoner of war who is living and working on their farm.  She is missing her husband and indeed starting to forget him and enters into a sexual relationship with Giancarlo, little more than a slave himself.  Also we meet Albercare, camp commandant, a rather hapless but well meaning man, who is trying to stick to the Geneva Convention in regards to treatment of prisoners and his difficult relationship with his wife, to whom he has been unfaithful.  And there in Major Suttor, also trying not to fuck anything up with the Japanese since his son is a prisoner of war in Burma, where it is known that prisoners are being ill treated.  He is afraid any errors in judgement will directly affect his son's treatment.   (Although it wasn't till after the war that the world knew about the extent of the atrocities).   Keneally is a master story teller and I was riveted from page 1.  He has a well honed facility for both plot and character.  A beautiful and brilliant novel.

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