My Beautiful Enemy

I was blinded by his beauty. In the one or two photographs I've kept of him I can still see it. Hestares out of them almost miserably, as if his loveliness is an affliction. Not that I saw it thatway, at least not in the beginning. In the beginning I thought it was a kind of miracle. Arthur Wheeler is haunted by his infatuation with a Japanese youth he encountered in the enemyalien camp where he worked as a guard during WW2. Abandoning his wife and baby son,Arthur sets out on a doomed mission to rescue his lover from forced deportation back to Japan, acountry in ruins. Thus begins the secret history of a soldier at war with his own sexuality and dangerously atodds with the racism that underpins the crumbling British Empire. Four decades later Arthur is still obsessed with the traumatic events of his youth. He proposes alast reunion with his lost lover, in the hope of laying his ghosts to rest, but this mission too seemsdoomed to failure. Like 'Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence' and Snow Falling On Cedars, My Beautiful Enemy exploresquestions of desire and redemption against the background of a savage racial war. In thiscontext, Arthur's private battles against his own nature, and against the conventions of his time,can only end in heartache.…