Prisoners of the Japanese: Literary Imagination and the Prisoner-Of-War Experience

While there have been many memoirs and diaries of former prisoners of war held by the Japanese during World War II, this is the first book to analyze the major works of fiction regarding the prisoner-of-war experience. Covering such seminal works as Pierre Boulle’s The Bridge on the River Kwai, Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice, J. G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, and John Doyle’s Australian television drama Changi, the study also draws on the writings of Daniel Defoe and the Jewish-Italian Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. Striving for an international focus, the book examines literature from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands.