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King Rat
 
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King Rat (Paperback)

by James Clavell (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
Price: £6.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

King Rat + Noble House (The Asian saga) + Whirlwind
Price For All Three: £20.97

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Product details

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks; New Ed edition (1 Jul 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0340750685
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340750681
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 15,460 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #5 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > C > Clavell, James
    #55 in  Books > Fiction > Genre > War

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Product Description

IAN FLEMING
'Terrifyingly exciting suspense'

Review
'A splendidly exciting and original story' (Sunday Telegraph )

'Terrifyingly exciting suspense' (Ian Fleming )

'KING RAT is the best novel in English to have come out of Japanese prisoner of war camps . . . James Clavell is a teller of stories. They are complicated and exciting, and you are desperate to know what will happen to his characters because they are like the people you know from your own life and experience, set in strange and sometimes terrible circumstances' (John Simpson )

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

King Rat
75% buy the item featured on this page:
King Rat 4.4 out of 5 stars (5)
£6.99
Tai-Pan (Asian saga)
9% buy
Tai-Pan (Asian saga) 4.8 out of 5 stars (17)
£6.99
Noble House (The Asian saga)
5% buy
Noble House (The Asian saga) 4.9 out of 5 stars (8)
£6.99
Gai-jin: A Novel of Japan (Asian saga)
5% buy
Gai-jin: A Novel of Japan (Asian saga) 3.2 out of 5 stars (14)
£6.99
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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, 25 Jan 2001
By A Customer
Set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in WWII, King Rat is a brilliant and gripping story that follows the lives and deaths of the men trapped behind the wire, held by brutal guards and slowly starving. Friendships and hatreds bloom, and we come to really care about the fate of the characters. King Rat shows the way that people survive extreme hardships: some by pulling together and helping each other, some by acting purely out of selfishness. Plus, how people try to impose their own order and maintain their own power in a place where they are helpless. A very incisive look at the human condition that is relevant everywhere: you'll recognise your work colleagues amongst the inmates.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars "Changi was genesis, the place of beginning again", 29 Sep 2007
By Sebastian Fernandez (Tampa, Florida United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
We should be really grateful for the strike that prevented Clavell to work as a screenplay writer and director for a few weeks in the early sixties and led them to write his first novel. In this edition there is a nice prologue by his daughter explaining what prompted him to write this book, and how quickly he wrote it. The novel is a fictionalized retelling of Clavell's experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Singapore.

Clavell does an amazing job in describing the personalities of the different characters that take part in the story. The fact that the camp held American, English and Australian prisoners provided him with the opportunity to showcase his acute understanding of the different cultures. If you add on top of that the Japanese and the locals that were in charge of managing the camp, you will find a wealth of characters that make this a mesmerizing read. There are two characters though, that are at the center of this tale, and whose actions could serve as a study in sociology. One is an American, the King, who is a corporal that has the ability to facilitate commerce, which is prohibited by camp rules, and therefore makes a very nice living, especially when compared with everyone else. When the King meets Peter Marlowe, a British Lieutenant, the contrast of personalities and moral codes could not be clearer. Thus starts an unusual friendship that will test Marlowe's character and convictions, since he will have to decide between compromising his morals in return for better living conditions for him and his friends, and sticking to his guns and keep on living miserably.

One thing that you can tell as soon as you start reading this novel, and that is confirmed later, is that Clavell is an excellent narrator and has a gift for describing characters and give them a soul. This helps understand how he can hold the reader's attention without it wavering in lengthy novels like "Shogun". In this case, the parts that deal with the secret commerce help provide the story with variety, because they speed up the pace and change the tone. It is also interesting that this edition includes the passages related to the situation of those left behind, mainly wives and kids. These provide additional insights into the lives of the prisoners, helping us understand their motivations and behavior better.

In summary, this can only be defined as an excellent read. Although it has some scenes that may be hard on some readers for their brutality, I believe that the great majority of people will love it.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Yo Dawg, I heard you like James Clavell..., 9 Mar 2009
By MR P Coyle "Patrick Coyle" (Northampton, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Yo Dawg, I heard you like James Clavell, so I put a character based on James Clavell into a book written by James Clavell so you can read about James Clavell while reading James Clavell.

Damn fine book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking
A great stand-alone book. Not reaching the heights of Shogun and Tai-Pan in my opinon but still a great book as only can be expected from this amazing writer.
Published 4 months ago by GS

3.0 out of 5 stars an engrossing documentary,-not entertaining blockbuster
James Clavells' books have a strange tendancy of being read by people - by accident. how many people have read shogun by the 'loft lottery'? Read more
Published on 9 Oct 2000 by dan_zai

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