On A Pow's Survival

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

The MUP Masterworks series celebrates distinguished Australian writers and ideas. Other writers in the series include Manning Clark, A.A. Phillips, Donald Horne, Janet McCalman and Brenda Niall. At risk of death, prisoner of war Ray Parkin secretly kept a journal of the months in 1943-44 he spent working on the Thai-Burma Railway. His account, first published as Into the Smother, received international acclaim for its restrained but realistic depiction of POWs living, working and dying in a Japanese camp deep in the Thai jungle. It was hailed by the legendary literary critic Max Harris as 'probably the finest POW writing in English'.

Author Bio

Ray Parkin was born in Melbourne. He joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1928 and spent eighteen years in the service. In 1942 he was on board HMAS Perth when the cruiser was sunk by the Japanese in the Sunda Strait, killing two-thirds of those on board. After the sinking of Perth Parkin spent three and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war in Java, on the Burma-Siam Railway and in coal mines in Japan. His award-winning book, H.M. Bark Endeavour, was published by MUP in 1997; two years later MUP republished Parkin's books about his wartime experiences as Ray Parkin's Wartime Trilogy. In 2001 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Melbourne.