Excellent to see two of Myrmidon’s latest releases in this month’s issue of Book Time: a free magazine from Bertrams that is distributed to indie bookshops throughout the UK.
Both The Horse Changer and Mistress of the Court are picked as some of this year’s hottest summer reads. If you like your historical fiction then you can’t go wrong with either of these two enthralling and well-researched novels.
Tan Twan Eng, author of The Gift of Rain and The Garden of Evening Mists, appears in the Malaysian edition of Elle magazine (August 2015).
Five acclaimed writers share with Elle readers just exactly what Malaysia means to them. For Twan, it was the small things in life that he remembers with clarity. The kindness of his mother, and the gratefulness of those less fortunate than himself, come across in this short piece of reminiscence.
‘… perhaps, every day all over KL, all over our country, people are doing such similar acts of unsolicited kindnesses, these small things, for complete strangers.’
If you’d like to read the full piece from Elle then please click here.
The Japanese character in this picture is typical of many Japanese in Malaya before the surprise Japanese invasion like the characters Aritomo and Endo in Tan Twan Eng’s books The Garden of Evening Mists and The Gift of Rain – performing all manner of seemingly innocuous roles while secretly spying for their country.
And the Dawn Came Up Like Thunder is the experience of an ordinary soldier captured by the Japanese at Singapore in February 1942. Leo Rawlings’ story is told in his own pictures and his own words; a world that is uncompromising, vivid and raw. He pulls no punches. For the first time cruelty inflicted on the prisoners of war by their own officers is depicted as well as shocking images of POW life. This is truly a view of the River Kwai experience for a 21st Century audience.
The new edition includes pictures never before published as well as an extensive new commentary by Dr Nigel Stanley, an expert on Rawlings and the medical problems faced on the Burma Railway. More than just a commentary on the history and terrible facts behind Rawlings’ work, it stands on its own as a guide to the hidden lives of the prisoners.
Most of the pictures are printed for the first time in colour as the artist intended, bringing new detail and insight to conditions faced by the POWs as they built the infamous death railway, and faced starvation, disease and cruelty. Pictures such as those showing the construction of Tamarkan Bridge, now famed as the prototype for the fictional Bridge on the River Kwai, and those showing the horrendous suffering of the POWs such as King of the Damned have an iconic status. Rawlings’ art brings a different perspective to the depiction of the world of the Far East prisoners. For the first time the pictures and original texts are printed in a large format edition, so that their full power can be experienced.
| Hardback | 240 pages | |
| ISBN | 978-1-905802-94-4 | |
| Release Date | 3rd September 2015 | |
| Price | £25.00 | |
| Ebook | 978-1-910183-05-2 |
Leo Rawlings (1918-1990) was a private in the 137th Field Regiment Royal Artillery. A budding artist living in Blackpool, his life was changed forever by the war. Fighting from December 1941 to February 1942 as part of the headlong British retreat eventually leading to defeat in Singapore, he chronicled in pictures and words the campaign and the events that followed from 1941-1945. He drew what he witnessed around him, leading him to be unofficially commissioned to keep a visual record of the prisoners of war’s lives.
