King Rat

Now a cult classic, this novel is set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp where Allied prisoners—English, Australian, and American—are struggling to survive. Cruel Japanese guards, a lack of food, malaria, cholera, and no news from home cause the captive soldiers to become apathetic “walking dead.” Only one of them refuses to be stripped of his inner freedom and rules the camp as the King. His incredible vitality and resourcefulness cannot be contained by barbed wire or the hatred of his fellow prisoners. The King’s closest friend in the camp becomes an English pilot, Peter Marlowe, a descendant of old British aristocracy. Although the two men’s life values could not be more different, together they stand against the pressure from their captors to definitively break the prisoners’ dignity…