"Цар Плъх" ми остави усещането, че съм имала късмета да се докосна до десетки човешки съдби и да се вълнувам, страхувам и надявам заедно с героите сякаш са мои стари приятели. С всяка страница част от мен се пренасяше в Чанги и разбираше неписаните закони на лагера, които макар и налудничави за хората отвън, държат основите на разбития свят на пленниците.
На пръв поглед неприлично оголена изглежда човешката същност, представена в нечовешките условия на лагера, но колкото повече четеш, толкова повече обикваш Човека - с неговите страхове, премълчани истини, копнеж да бъде нечии приятел или враг, силата му и несломимото желание за живот.

Наистина класика!

Vēsturisko Asian Saga romānu sērijā King Rat gan tās apjoma, gan darbības lokācijas ierobežotības veidā, kad visi notikumi norit vienā kara gūstekņu nometnē Changi, vairāk šķita kā tāda .5 starpgrāmata.

https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/202...

Не 5, ако имаше как и 10 звезди щях да ѝ дам... Разкошна книга. Не ми се искаше да свършва. От тези, които после ти оставят книжен махмурлук... просто стоиш, гледаш в точка, не можеш да излезеш от историята и да се върнеш към реалността.

How does one survive in a prisoner of war camp under harsh conditions? One way is to adapt and take advantage of the weaker.

After finishing Clavell's Shogun earlier this month I immediately turned to Wikipedia to read more about the author. There I learned that he had been imprisoned by the Japanese during WW2, a POW in Changi Camp, and that he later wrote King Rat about a man he knew in that camp. I was fascinated by the idea of a semi-autobiographical story in this setting as I was convinced that the story would feel more authentic. And I was correct.

The story is incredible right from the beautiful first line:

Changi was set like a pearl on the eastern tip of Singapore Island, iridescent under the bowl of tropical skies. It stood on a slight rise and around it was a belt of green, and farther off the green gave way to the blue-green seas and the seas to infinity of horizon.

It feels as though the book will be a magical and lovely tribute of sorts to an equally magical and lovely place. I found the deep irony of that to be a fantastic way to introduce a novel of war.

Clavell's writing is very good. He takes you on a journey into the POW camp where you find yourself wasting away from lack of food, and willing to do almost anything to stay alive. The story is gripping and shocking. We find ourselves living among men living in the most extreme circumstances, and we see exactly how that can cause some people to act.

The two main characters of the novel are very different from one another and yet it is believable that they forge a friendship. The man called the King is a clever, smart, young American who takes advantage of everyone. He is not likable, and operates in such a way as to inspire both fear and revulsion but also some measure of admiration. The second man is a British officer named Peter Marlowe who has always thought that the upper classes of civilian and military societies were better people than the lower classes. When Marlowe comes into contact with King and finds himself needing King's skills his views begin to change. This is where the book sings, in my opinion.

The men are courageous, brave, and have the greatest survival instincts. But they also show a lack of scruples. They are flexible which allows them to adjust to one another. What can a person do to survive the worst? What will he have to change about himself? How will he adjust when the war ends? Will he take away anything positive from the experience? Will the people he love before remain in his heart and he in theirs? This book provokes thought about all of these things and now I wish I could find a biography of the author with more insight.

4.5 stars.

A powerful story about survival and the compromises one makes in order to live another day - especially in extraordinary circumstances such as a harsh prison in the WW2 period. You cannot help but wonder what you would have done placed in their shoes - what cost would you be willing to pay?

This is the kind of society and social hierarchy, that of a WWII POW camp, that would not be out of place in a science fiction novel about a dystopian world. The story is structured in a way to perfectly juxtapose the classism, corruption, and hypocrisy of the various groups. All the while that these factions exist within the camp, and the hierarchy exists within, the Japanese maintain the camp and are literally the real enemy. It is a really great book about survival under prison conditions and the society, leaders, and hierarchy that results from necessity (pragmatism or realism I suppose) or in the alternative, from artificial conditions like the rank of an officer (privilege or elitism I suppose). I personally enjoyed the complex morality of the situation as it is presented and the choices the characters make, acting accordingly. It raises those moral and ethical questions in the framework of survival.

I read this once decades ago, but Mom & I were talking about it one morning. When she got her hair cut later that day, she found a copy in their free book rack & loved it. My library has it in an audio edition, so I listened to it. It's a great fictionalized account of American, British, & Australians in Changi, a Japanese POW camp during WWII.

This audio edition has extra material from the original manuscript that's never been published before including an introduction written by Clavell's son. Clavell was a prisoner in the Changi POW camp that this book centers around. He wrote this during a screenwriter's strike in 1962, a fictionalized account of his own incarceration there. While he inspired the Phillip Marlowe character (Who also shows up in Noble House.) there really was a character who inspired The King. I'm not sure how much is fact or fiction, but think there's enough fact to put it on my 'sort-of-nonfiction' shelf.

The extra material are chapters covering the story of some of the women whose men are in the prison camp. They're a great addition. His mother had written to him weekly. On his release he received the letters. During his incarceration, he neither sent nor received any. His mother wrote all those letters not knowing if he was alive or not. Uncertainty is hell & the Japanese, although they signed the Geneva Convention, never ratified it nor did they follow it.

The Princeton Bio for James Clavell:
https://web.archive.org/web/201707080...
Wikipedia - James Clavell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cl...

IIRC, when I first read this decades ago, 98% of the American's in the Japanese POW camps died. Those are no longer the figures I'm seeing when I google this now & the Princeton Bio says only 1% of the prisoners at Changi died while Clavell says 90%. Overall, 1/4 - 1/3 of the prisoners died according to most sources. By all accounts, most deaths were due to disease & starvation exacerbated by extremely crowded conditions. Clavell does a superb job describing everything, although it's awful. Clavell, a 6' tall man, weighed 98 lbs when released from Changi, likely a bit more than half what he should have weighed. He writes that death was a mercy to some & many lost their health completely, going blind, losing all their teeth, among other horrors.

The end was the most interesting. The entire book is based on how horrible the camp is, yet what happens when the war ends? You need to read it to find out. Wow!

Wikipedia - Changi Prison
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changi_P...
The original prison was built to hold 600 prisoners, but the Japanese used it to hold 3000 civilians during WWII. This sort of overcrowding was apparently typical.

This was read by Dave Case. He had a lot to live up to since 3 others in this series were read by John Lee who absolutely wowed me. He did a good job.

Wikipedia - King Rat (novel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Rat...

Wikipedia - King Rat (film 1965)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Rat...
This doesn't follow the book precisely, but was still a great movie.

This isn't quite the correct edition. The ISBN doesn't match & the language is English, but the narrator is Dave Case & the publisher is Books On Tape, so close enough.

I highly recommend reading this book ONCE in any format. I can't recommend a reread. That would be masochistic unless you let at least a couple of decades pass. It's not pleasant, but really good.

nie chcę zapeszać, ale może to być jedna z najlepszych książek moich ostatnich miesięcy. wyjątkowo z nią rezonuję, była dokładnie tym, czego po niej oczekiwałam.
bardzo trafiły do mnie postacie, tak mało czarno-białe. i sama końcówka, słodko-gorzka, gdzie niby powinna być sama radość, a jest dziwna pustka i smutek.
i to, jak rozkład sił bohaterów zmienił się całkowicie, jak po tym, co dzieje się pod koniec, okazuje się, że dla niektórych życie się właśnie kończy, a nie zaczyna. mind-blowing.
i na saaamym końcu, gdy wyjaśnia się tytuł. i niby wiadomo, o co chodzi z nim od początku, ale dopiero, gdy zostało to powiedziane jeszcze raz, moja głowa pojęła chyba tę książkę w pełni.
król szczurów? damn. more like król tylko szczurów.

It is a book that you can read separately from the other books in the saga as it is based on the author's real life experience. It describes the camp that the Western-world soldiers were kept in until the Japanese were defeated. It is not so gruesome (comparing to other camp stories, especially Auschwitz) and it describes the psychological phenomena and changes in people in the different stages of occupation. Very interesting from this point of view.

Изключително въздействащ финал, провокиращ размисъл за силата на духа, адаптивността и дори физическото оцеляване!

ВСВ. Японски концлагер. И да, по-зле е, отколкото можете да си представите…