Continuing my progress through James Clavell’s canon, I read King Rat last week. It’s a fascinating book, and very different than Shogun. It seems that during WWII, Clavell was held in Changi prison, a Japanese prison camp in Singapore. Two decades later, he wrote a novel based on his experiences…and that’s what I knew when I opened the book. It was not what I expected.

What I expected was the story of how he was captured, and of interrogations, and sadistic torture, and hot boxes, and solitary confinement—you know, “Bridge over the River Kwai” kinds of things. What I got was very different.

The book begins some months before the end of the war. The Japanese and the prisoners have worked out a sort of detente: the Japanese (or their Korean guards) patrol the outside of the wire, and the British, Australian and American officers keep order inside the wire. Clavell’s stand-in, Lt. Peter Marlowe, is an RAF pilot who was captured in Java. As the novel opens, he befriends (or, really, is befriended) by an American corporal named King, known to all in the camp as “the King”. He’s the King because he’s the guy who can sell things for you and get you money. He can get stuff for you. He, in and of himself, is pretty much the black market in Changi prison. Because of his position, he’s the best dressed man in the camp: he’s got a complete uniform. Few of the others, including the officers, have anything so nice. And because of his position, there are many in the camp, including Grey, the Provost Marshall, who want to see him tumble from his position. Because of their friendship, Marlowe gets tarred to some extent with the same brush.

As I say, this is not a book about sadistic prison guards. But life in Changi is hard, very hard, very, very hard. But the prisoners have learned to survie. They have learned to grow greens, and fertilize them with urine, so that they don’t get scurvy. They have learned to capture cockroaches from the latrine pits, and harvest their protein. The lucky ones keep chickens, because eggs are rich in vitamins and without the vitamins you die of beriberi. There are many different ways of coping, and we see them all. It warps the men…but by the end of the book it begins to seem normal, somehow.

And then the war ends. And the relieving U.S. and British forces come in to save the prisoners and bring them home. And we see the prisoners with new eyes, with the eyes of the newcomers…and we are appalled.

This is not a book for kids; by no means is it a book for kids. Nor is it a book for the squeamish…though, I admit, it didn’t make me squirm nearly as much as your average Stephen King novel. It’s a very good book, and I recommend it.

One last note. As first written, the book had vignettes concerning the wives and the sweethearts of some of the prisoners, and how they coped with their loved ones being gone for years on end. On first publication, these pages were removed. In the current edition, they have been restored…and the book is much stronger for it, I think.