Why a Booktrail?
ww2: The first in three stories about South Asia during WW2
Bamboo Heart (Bamboo Trilogy 1)
What you need to know before your trail
Thailand, 1943: Thomas Ellis, has been captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore, and is a prisoner-of-war on the Death Railway. In stifling heat he endures endless days of clearing jungle,torture and lack of food. All he dreams of though is returning home – not to his native london, but to Penang.
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.
Locations
Reset- Thailand
- A: Death Railway
- Malaysia
- B: Penang - the Penang Club
- Singapore
- C: Singapore - Former City Hall
- England
- D: London - Highbury Corner
Travel Guide
Death Burma Railway London, Penang, Singapore, Thailand
The crux of the book and indeed the trilogy is the inhumane conditions and the trials surrounding the Thai – Burma railway, otherwise known as the Death Railway. This was built piece by piece, a day of backbreaking work after another by prisoners in the country. The railway was used to transport Japanese supplies into Burma to aid the war effort. But working on them is described here as some of the most back breaking and soil destroying work ever. Tom works here when captured but his love for a woman he met in Malaysia on a rubber plantation
The camp he and other prisoners live on is a harsh place to be:
“Sunset was swift in the tropics and within a few minute everything he could see through the bamboo bars above his prison pit would be enveloped in darkness”
They wake up to the sounds of a bugle, and have filthy uniforms whilst others have rags and exposing their skeletal bodies. Every day there is the fear that at any moment they hears a metal lid being thrown aside and that rough hands will force him to the ground where he will be shot
With darkness comes quiet and peace of a kind
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Bamboo Heart (Bamboo Trilogy 1)
Author/Guide Ann Bennett Destination: London, Penang, Singapore, Thailand Departure Time: 1930s/40s and 1980s
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