![]() As a colonel and a surgeon, Dorrigo becomes the leader of the prisoners and is hailed after the war for his bravery, becoming a famous war hero. The protagonist of the book is a man called Dorrigo Evans, a doctor who enlists at the beginning of WWII and whose unit surrenders to the Japanese in Java. Simply put, this is a novel about war and love, yet it’s also about good and evil, about power and submission, and about cowardice and bravery. At times I had to take breaks from reading about the abuse suffered at the hands of the Japanese it is told in horrifyingly graphic detail with no description spared, yet I feel it is important to know all this to understand the depth of the novel and, if nothing else, for the reader to know the realities of what went on in that part of the war. Yes, it is hugely harrowing and people who lived through World War Two, or those who cannot face brutality, may well not want to read it, being about Australian prisoners of war who worked on the infamous Thailand-Burma Death Railway. ![]() It won the Man Booker Prize last year and the chair of the judges, AC Grayling, said: “ Some years, very good books win the Man Booker Prize, but this year a masterpiece has won it.” I should remember not to be put off by other people’s warnings and only make my judgement once I have started reading a book – this is an incredible novel. ![]() I had been warned that this book was terribly gruesome and harrowing and that made me hesitate to read it. ![]()
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