The Naked Island, by Russell Braddon is about "the experiences of an Australian solidier imprisoned in Changi for four years during World War II." It was first published in 1953.
The famous illustrator Ronald Searle was a POW with Braddon, and his prison-camp drawings can be found in the print edition of the book. LinkRiver Valley Camp lay on either side of an especially foul little stream from which we were in the habit of fishing frogs for the purpose of conducting frog races and gambling thereon. This gambling was quickly forbidden by the authorities which ban we habitually ignored, our three-dollar monthly pay check having by this time been rendered valueless by inflation.
Apart from the frogs and the foul little stream, there were rows upon rows of dilapidated attap huts with two tiers of bamboo decking running down each side of a mud passageway. On each of these slept hundreds of men, whilst in the bamboo supports and decks and the attap roofing there lurked many billions of bugs all of them with Anglophobia.
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Reminds me of "King Rat" by James Clavelle (sp?), who also served in a POW camp and who based the novel in Changi.
Thanks for posting this. My Grandad was a prisoner in that same camp, and has written up his memoirs of the experience, which are a harrowing read.
I know boingboing likes manybooks' reformatting of Gutenberg texts, but that book was horrible--it's as though the publisher just took the Archive.org version and ran it straight through, without any proofing or editing.
Errors galore, starting with the first page. Haven't seen that since Wiretap.
At least get him to run a spell-checker before he links the page.
Just wanted to add my thanks for pointing this book out. I'm heading towards the end and have really enjoyed reading it.
I would say it's quite a bit more interesting than King Rat.
Please keep posting up books that take your fancy, I've read a couple of them now.