Shame and the Captives: A Novel

"If the legendary Schindler's List was not enough to showcase Thomas Keneal ly's literary mastery, then [this novel] surely will" (New York Daily News) as the Booker Prize-winning author reimagines from all sides the drastic t rue events of the night more than one thousand Japanese POWs staged the lar gest and bloodiest prison escape of World War II. Alice is living on her father-in-law's farm on the edge of an Australian co untry town, while her husband is held prisoner in Europe. When Giancarlo, a n Italian inmate at the prisoner-of-war camp down the road, is assigned to work on the farm, she hopes that being kind to him will somehow influence h er husband's treatment. What she doesn't anticipate is how dramatically Gia ncarlo will change the way she understands both herself and the wider world . What most challenges Alice and her fellow townspeople is the utter foreignn ess of the thousand-plus Japanese inmates and their deeply held code of hon or, which the camp commanders fatally misread. Mortified by being taken ali ve in battle and preferring a violent death to the shame of living, the Jap anese prisoners plan an outbreak with shattering and far-reaching consequen ces for all the citizens around them. In a career spanning half a century, Thomas Keneally has proven brilliant at exploring ordinary lives caught up in extraordinary events. With this profoundly gripping and thought-provoking novel, inspired by a notorious incident in New South Wales in 1944, he once again shows why he is celebrated as a writer who "looks into the heart of the human condition with a piercing intelligence that few can match" (Sunday Telegraph).

Product Info

ISBN: 0857980998

ISBN-13: 9780857980991

Publisher: Atria Books

Year: 2015

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

Seller Info

InfinityBooksJapan

Address: 1F Komagata Heights Bldg Tokyo,

Website: https://www.infinitybooksjapan.com

Country: Japan