Description
Title: One Fourteenth of an Elephant
Author: Peek, Ian Denys
Condition: Very Good Plus
Edition: 2nd Edition
Publication Date: 2004
ISBN: 0330364634
Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 520 pages
Comments: After the fall of Singapore in February 1941, Denys Peek and his brother were taken prisoner by the Japanese, alongside tens of thousands of Australian, British and Commonwealth soldiers.
Six months later, Denys, his brother and their comrades were packed into steel goods wagons and transported to Siam as part of the labour force destined for the project later to be known as the Burma-Thailand Railway. Denys spent the next three years in over fifteen different work and ‘hospital’ camps on the railway, stubbornly refusing to give in and die where over 20,000 prisoners of war and uncounted slave labourers met their deaths.
Told in the present tense, this is a haunting, evocative and deeply moving testimony to the suffering and the bravery of those who lived and died on the railway. Against a backdrop of inhumanity and brutality, the greatest examples of humanity and courage are thrown into stark relief as the author takes us through his daily struggle for survival.
