Merdeka Rising: Part Two of Black Sun, Red Moon: A Novel of Java

As Japan’s empire crumbles, an island paradise ignites in revolution…

Praise for Part One: "Exquisitely written…an exciting, brutal slice of history"—BookLife by Publishers Weekly Prize in Fiction

• Kate van Dam is struggling to survive the squalor and deprivation of an internment camp. Faced with a sick mother, little food and medicines she accepts the dubious offer of 'hostess work' at Japanese officers' club....
  
• Japan's surrender saves Lt Kenichi Ota from a suicidal last stand. But to save the woman he loves he will have to draw his sword once again...
  
• Highlander Alun MacDonald has had his fill of the British Army but finds himself facing a new, unpredictable foe and having to trust his former enemies with his life…
  
• Lamban longs for independence for Indonesia. A chance encounter with an activist plunges him into a teeming, dangerous world of secret societies, plots and the whirlwind of revolution…
  
• War Correspondent Meg Graham is expecting to cover Japan's defeat. Instead she is pitched into a ruthless struggle for an empire unrestrained by rules of war.
  

"A good, realistic account based on actual events. Well worth reading!" — Stuart Guild (27th Field Regt Royal Artillery, Burma 1944-45)

Japan's sudden surrender ends the Second World War but triggers the Indonesian declaration of independence from the Netherlands, catching the returning Dutch and 'Southeast Asia's peacekeepers', the British, by surprise. In a chaotic, mistrustful peace the British order the Japanese to defend the white colonial order. Recent foes have no choice but to become allies...of a kind. In greatest peril are 80,000 European women and children interned by the Japanese. Defenceless, abandoned and half-starved, some of them former sex slaves of the Japanese, they become hostages to fortune. As their former guards become their guardians, protecting them from hostile, armed mobs, hatreds and prejudices are hastily re-examined. British, Gurkha and Indian troops, veterans of the bitter Burma campaign against the Japanese, arrive in Java expecting a warm welcome, grateful civilians and easy duties. Very soon their orders are rewritten, and their mission and motives questioned, as they face determined, massive and frequently suicidal opposition in the war for Java….

"An almost tangible glimpse of the chaos that was Java in 1945-46. Marron's writing, infused with imaginative speculation, is sweeping, poignant, passionate and unflinching." (Publisher’s Catalogue)