The Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness (Movie Tie-in Editions) - Softcover

Lomax, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039334407X ISBN 13: 9780393344073

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014

Synopsis

Winner of the PEN/Ackerley Prize

The Railway Man is a remarkable memoir of forgiveness―a tremendous testament to the courage that propels one toward remembrance, and finally, peace with the past.

Eric Lomax, sent to Malaya in World War II, was taken prisoner by the Japanese and put to punishing work on the notorious Burma-Siam railway. After the radio he illicitly helped to build in order to follow war news was discovered, he was subjected to two years of starvation and torture. He would never forget the interpreter at these brutal sessions. Fifty years after returning home from the war, marrying, and gaining the strength from his wife Patti to fight his demons, he learned the interpreter was alive. Through letters and meeting with his former torturer, Lomax bravely moved beyond bitterness drawing on an extraordinary will to extend forgiveness.

Now a major motion picture starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman.

About this title

Review:

Eric Lomax, a British army soldier, was captured by the Japanese during the Singapore campaign of 1942. A railroad buff since a child, he took strange pleasure in his work as a POW on the Burma-Siam Railroad, which was later the subject of the film Bridge Over the River Kwai. When his captors discovered his detailed drawings of the railway, he was suspected as a spy and tortured for years. Fifty years later he discovered that the interpreter during his tortures was still alive. The two arranged a meeting and Lomax forgave him. Here is the exciting, moving and truthful account.

From the Inside Flap:

Winner of the 1996 NCR Book Award
A naive young man, a radio enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the Railway of Death -- the Japanese line from Thailand and Burma. The most disastrous engineering project in history, it killed 250,000 Allied prisoners and Thai labourers. Lomax helped to build a radio so that he and his comrades could follow news of the war. The radio was discovered and he was brutally tortured. One of his tormentors was a young Japanese interpreter; Lomax never forgot him. Despite an outwardly successful life, Lomax was emotionally ruined by his experiences and could never share them with anyone. Almost fifty years after the war, his life was changed by the discovery that his interrogator, the Japanese interpreter, was still alive. This is the story of a tragic life and a transformed old age.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 039334407X
• ISBN 13: 9780393344073
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288