Hiroshima Joe : A Novel

One of the most powerful novels about the experience of war, first published in 1985

Captured by Hirohito's soldiers at the fall of Hong Kong and transferred to a Japanese slave camp outside Hiroshima, Captain Joe Sandingham was present when the bomb was dropped. Now a shell of a man, he lives in a cheap Hong Kong hotel, scrounging for food and the occasional bar girl. The locals call him "Hiroshima Joe" with a mixture of pity and contempt. But Joe—haunted by the sounds and voices of his past, debilitated by illness, and shattered by his wartime ordeal—is a man whose compassion and will to survive define a clear-eyed and unexpected heroism.

“Engrossing...unflinchingly graphic.” —The New York Times

“A brilliant achievement.” —Daily Telegraph (UK)

“A carefully controlled study of man's beastliness to man, vividly observed.” —Financial Times

“Fashion[s] a moving drama from the cruelties and pathologies of modern warfare and some moral meaning from the terrible travail of a man who survived, and even transcended it.” —Publishers Weekly