By James Clavell
1963
First UK Edition, Clavell’s first book.
In unusually fine condition.

James Clavell born Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell (1921 –1994) was a British and American writer, screenwriter, director, and World War II veteran and prisoner of war.

King Rat (1962), was a semi-fictional account of his prison experiences at Changi. When the book was published it became an immediate best-seller, and three years later it was adapted as a movie.

The time: 1945. The place: Changi, a Japanese prison camp near Singapore. English-men, Australians and Americans who live there suffer from disease, hunger and relentless heat. That is, all suffer except the King. An American corporal before his capture, the King is now a wheeling, dealing black marketeer who has built an empire for himself at the expense of his fellow prisoners. Hated and feared, the King has only one friend, and he is the unlikeliest choice in the camp: an aristocratic R.A.F. officer, Peter Marlowe. Marlowe learns from the King that under stress there can be no hard and fast distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil. But to Lieutenant Grey, the Provost Marshal of Changi, morality is indeed a matter of black and white and he is sworn to destroy the King and Peter Marlowe. James Clavell has written a violent, bitterly humourous, first novel about men and survival and the women for whom they bleed.

145mm x 210mm

R1,000