The Railway Man

click here for more details, find new or used items	Eric Lomax Our price £5.99 (£7.99) New from £2.92 Used from £0.94 Pages: 288 (Paperback) ISBN: 0099582317 Pub: Vintage Pub date: 1998-01-03 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 3337

Reader Reviews:

Make this your next read an absolute must!!!!!!!! (0/0 people found this helpful)

For those of you who have made a list of 100 things to do before you die. Whatever number you are now at make the next one this book. I garantee the list will change from the moment this book is finished. You will realise the stupidity of the list you have devised and come to an understanding that life is never as bad as it might seem.
To those of you that have no understanding of war, how mean man can get to other human beings read this book.
To anyone who at this moment is having a family feud and sees no end to hatred read this book.
To anyone that wants to understand the meaning of suffering and foregiveness read this book.
To anyone that has never shed a tear please read this book.

The Railway Man/ Authur Eric Lomax (0/0 people found this helpful)

Without doubt the finest book I've ever read. Anybody who can read this without tear staining the pages has no soul or emotions.
It starts slowly showing a boy who is awkward because he doesn't share the normal interests of youth but it develops through his age experience and the horrors he endures to provide a man of intense intelligence compassion and the ultimate forgiveness to provide us all with a desire to do the best we can, and yes I'm crying as I write this review. I've just ordered a new copy as my other one is very dog eared.

OUTSTANDING! (0/0 people found this helpful)

I have never read a book so fast in all my life! A real 'page-turner', a riveting story. Its incredible that anyone could survive the experiences described in this book. I think that this book is crying out to be made into a film. It has everything that would make a truly great film :- a time of turmoil, an exotic location, a mild-mannered character drawn into a horrifying set of circumstances and surviving against staggering odds, humanity displayed at its best and at its worst, the backdrop of a world war, and ultimate reconciliation and forgiveness - the solution of an inner torment that could be solved in no other way.

I hope to see this on the big-screen one day.

An honest and unique personal testimony (2/2 people found this helpful)

The reason this book makes such an impact is that while numerous other books of WWII experiences and POW and torture on the Burma Railway have been written since that conflict ended, this has two additional and unique aspects that mark it out.

The first is of the writer having undergone treatment at the Medical Foundation (a charity that usually deals with torture victims of harsh political regimes in peacetime) as their first ex-serviceman with battle stress in 1988, 43 years after the war had ended!

The second is that he subsequently met with one of the Japanese soldiers who had participated in the torture sessions he had suffered, by a series of opportune circumstances and as part of his above recovery programme. It is a fact that while that Japanese soldier's role was solely as translator and not physical torturer, for the writer the focus of that person's role as he suffered given the questioning he underwent had led to him reserving most hatred for him in his memories of events.The evidence learnt that the individual had devoted himself since the end of the War to charitable works around the events in Asia had made little impact till they met.

By the end the reconciliation and forgiveness which the author had denied as possible up to that point occur since as he accepts the hating has to stop.

A remarkable personal testimony though I have to admit I found it owes as much to the honest and simple factual writing style including the many admissions of personal mistakes and naivete on events both pre and post the war as well as the errors that led to his suffering the fate he did in Asia after capture by the Japanese.

poignant for today (2/2 people found this helpful)

I was extremely moved by this book when i read it a few years ago and gave it to my father in law, a second world war veteran. it was especially memorable for introducing me, second hand, to the torture now known as water boarding and the fact that experiencing this torture had an almost lifelong impact on the author.

today i read that the bush administration's nominee for attorney general , mr. mukasey, refused to state whether he thought waterboarding a form of torture or not. i recommend he read this account, unless he chooses to undergo the procedure firsthand. now under the bush regime we have truly become the people we hated and demonized.

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