Hiroshima Joe

Like Steve Rosse, I found this book abroad. I came across it at the British Council library in Mexico City, and was also deeply effected. I think of it often, and it really came to mind after reading John Lanchester's "Fragrant Harbor" which seems very soft edged next to "Hiroshima Joe".You can really feel Hong Kong in this book--and not the usual high end of the city where you would expect to find an Englishman like Joe. He is clinging to the very edge of the respectability that his Englishness gives him, and the fact that others know how close he is to falling gives him a scary vulnerability. He has lost all face. He is an addict and a thief, and his loss of control leads him to abuse the only person he can imagine is weaker than he is--a child.Taken prisoner by the Japanese during the siege of Hong Kong, Joe never goes home when the war is over. Martin Booth so convincingly sets up Joe's past that we ache for him as he is now. Booth builds up real suspense in telling Joe's story, something that few novels manage these days when you have no doubt that the protagonist will triumph for the sake of the sequel. Joe is threatened from so many different sides that you cannot imagine how his story will end.

I found a battered paperback edition of Hiroshima Joe in a crummy guest house in Chiang Rai, Thailand, in 1990. Read it cover to cover in one sitting, then walked around stunned for two days. Threw away the copy I had, and I regret it to this day, because I haven't ever met anyone else who's read this book, and for a while I thought I might have imagined the whole thing. How wonderful to find that others have read it, and liked it, and I wasn't halucinating. I hope some day I find another copy so I can read it again. Mr. Booth, thank you so much.

I can't recomend this book highly enough; it is well written and as in all good books exists as a beautiful and very very sad human story above and beyond its specific tale of a young man taken prisoner after the fall of Hong Kong on Christmas 1941. The authour explores themes of lonliness, isolation and the loss of love, hypocracy and portrays very well the life of a man who is trapped; trapped by his illness, trapped by his addiction and trapped in his memories of the war and all that he lost, trapped by his guilt for having survived when all those that he loved did not. The war is no dramatic backdrop, Booth's detail and research make this story very real - he is true to his protagonist and true to the times he describes. It is one of my favourite books read it if you find it!

What a pity this book is out of print. This is one of the best "war" stories I've ever read. I put the word war in quotes because it's not your average war story - it's not on the same playing field as, say, Leon Uris' "Battle Cry", or "The 13th Valley"; it's more along the lines of Clavell's "King Rat", although I found this book to be much more human than "Rat". In 1952, Joe Sandingham lives in Hong Kong - but during the war, he was captured by the Japanese and placed in several of their POW camps - first in Hong Kong, then several others along the way, finally winding up in Japan. This is the story both of Joe's experiences during the war, and of his life after the war is over, which was a direct result of his time in the POW camps. The title of the book should be a dead giveaway as to one of his experiences; indeed, this book contains some of the most harrowing descriptions of the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb that I've ever read. If you can get your hands on this book in a used-book store, by all means buy it.