Bamboo Heart

Author(s): Ann Bennett

Location(s): London, Penang, Singapore, Thailand

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1930s/40s and 1980s

Location

Content

The First in the Bamboo Trilogy.

Thailand, 1943: Thomas Ellis, captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore, is a prisoner-of-war on the Death Railway. In stifling heat he endures endless days of clearing jungle, breaking stone and lugging wood. He must stay alive, although he is struck down by disease and tortured by Japanese guards, and he must stay strong, although he is starving and exhausted. For Tom has made himself a promise: to return home. Not to the grey streets of London, where he once lived, but to Penang, where he found paradise and love.

London, 1986: Laura Ellis, a successful City lawyer, turns her back on her yuppie existence and travels to Southeast Asia. In Thailand and Malaysia she retraces her father’s past and discovers the truths he has refused to tell her. And in the place where her father once suffered and survived, she will finally find out how he got his Bamboo Heart.

This is a story of a soldier’s strength and survival in the bleakest of times and a daughter’s journey of discovery about her father and herself.

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