Hiroshima Joe by Martin Booth

Hiroshima Joe by Martin Booth

One of the most powerful novels about the experience of war, first published in 1985

Captured by Hirohito's soldiers at the fall of Hong Kong and transferred to a Japanese slave camp outside Hiroshima, Captain Joe Sandingham was present when the bomb was dropped. Now a shell of a man, he lives in a cheap Hong Kong hotel, scrounging for food and the occasional bar girl. The locals call him "Hiroshima Joe" with a mixture of pity and contempt. But Joe--haunted by the sounds and voices of his past, debilitated by illness, and shattered by his wartime ordeal--is a man whose compassion and will to survive define a clear-eyed and unexpected heroism.

Martin Booth is a bestselling novelist as well as a documentary and feature film screenwriter. Islands of Silence, Hiroshima Joe, and The Industry of Souls are among his thirteen novels. Opium: A History and The Doctor, the Detective, and Arthur Conan Doyle, a biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, are two of his most recent nonfiction books.