Behind Bamboo: Hell on the Burma Railway

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Description

The bestselling memoir of life as an Australian POW on the notorious Thai-Burma railway. Rohan Rivett was a journalist in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese in 1942. He escaped south - across the treacherous Bangka Strait - to Indonesia, but was soon captured and became just one of thousands of POWs struggling for existence in a Japanese camp. The struggle was to last for more than three years. Behind Bamboo is unflinching in its honesty and haunting in its realism. It is a vivid, compelling testament to the Australians' will to survive and their unassailable spirit in the face of the most callous inhumanity.

Author Bio

Rohan Rivett (1917 - 1977) was born in Melbourne. He was the son of the distinguished scientist David Rivett and a grandson of Alfred Deakin. He studied at the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford before joining the Argus newspaper in 1939 as a journalist. He was a war correspondent in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese in 1942, and survived as a prisoner-of-war for more than three years. Rivett returned to journalism after the war and later became a director of News Limited and a director of the International Press Institute, Zurich. He published several non-fiction books and a biography of his father.