Monday, April 07, 2008


HIROSHIMA JOE
Martin Booth PicadorUS
NZ$29.99

I don’t know when I last felt so much sympathy and empathy for a fictional character as I have done these past few days while reading about Captain Joe Sandingham, the poor bastard who is the creation of one of the UK’s greatest contemporary writers, the late Martin Booth.

More about Booth later but for now I need to write about Joe Sandingham, Hiroshima Joe, for whom my heart has been weeping as I became involved in this totally engrossing story of a man who remarkably survived both Japanese prisoner of war camps during World War Two and the atomic bombing of Hirsohima. At the end of his tale I felt devastated.
It is not to say that Sandingham is an attractive character, quite the reverse, but my goodness the lot that befalls him is a greater burden than anyone should be expected to carry.

The novel alternates between war and post-war chapters, from 1941 to 1952. Initially Sandingham is a refined British officer defending Hong Kong against the Japanese, he is fussy about the tea he drinks, likes to discuss poetry and can place the accents of everyone he meets. But all this changes on Christmas Eve 1941 when he is captured by the Japanese as they take Hong Kong and so begins four years of horrific imprisonment and utter degradation. Man’s inhumanity to man in these Japanese prisoner of war camps is truly sickening and Booth’s descriptions are so unflinchingly graphic that at times I had to put the book aside.
In the final chapter from the war years Sandingham experiences the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, hence his nickname, Hiroshima Joe.

In the post war chapters Sandingham’s life is a pretty miserable one also as he is frequently humiliated while living in greatly reduced circumstances in Hong Kong . He steals and scavengers and runs messages for a crime lord in order to pay his rent at the cheap hotel where he lives.

This is a book, I guess about the insanity of war, it is the most disturbing fiction I have read in many a year and I doubt I shall ever forget it.

I wrote about Martin Booth after reading Industry of Souls, another superb book about a displaced Englishman, so I will not repeat myself except to say that Industry of Souls was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1998 after being initially rejected by a number of major publishers. Booth didn’t start writing until he was 40 and he died from cancer in 2004 aged 59. But in those 19 years he wrote several novels, 10 children’s books and 10
non- fiction titles of biography, criticism and history. He was hugely talented and the world is a poorer place without him. I rate him as one of the most hugely talented but largely unrecognized UK writers in the latter part of the 20th century.

Those who have read Booth's superb memoir, Gweilo, will know that he lived part of his childhood in Hong Kong which no dount asssisted him with his setting in Hiroshima Joe.

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