King Rat
The time is World War II. The place is a brutal prison camp deep in Japanese-occupied territory. Here, within the seething mass of humanity, one man, an American corporal, seeks dominance over both captives and captors alike. His weapons are human courage, unblinking understanding of human weaknesses, and total willingness to exploit every opportunity to enlarge his power and corrupt or destroy anyone who stands in his path.From the Paperback edition.
Stats for nerds
14recommend
19mentions
16people
2010–2024years
84% recommend16% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For an extended read, you may try "King Rat" by James Clavell - same author of the current hit show "Shogun".
The book is set in the same Changi PoW camp where the author was held during WWII. The character Lieutenant-Colonel Larkin is based off Lieutenant-Colonel E. E. "Weary" Dunlop who was the real life surgeon using these tools for creating artificial limbs amongst other things and whom Clavell knew and presumably Bradley too.
It's not exactly a cheery read but very much an inspiring one in terms of survival, ingenuity, and moral complexity.
- Thanks, I've read it, don't remember the lathe in it. Awesome book. So much better than shogun or any of his other works from his "trader series".
I recommend King Rat to people who need to get back in to reading books.
- King Rat is fiction, but James Clavell was in Changi, he's a good author in his own right and a good intro book to his work.
His take on POW economies is worth a look. Also the class systems and how it fits in.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Rat_(Clavell_novel)
The movie is ok too.
- James Clavell's underappreciated first novel King Rat, based on his own experiences as a WW2 POW at Changi, gives a nice if occasionally horrifying view into how the camp economy worked.
- Before I start - by "what is a book worth in the 21st century ?" do you mean non-fiction? Because then we agree on that point. However...
There is no such thing as "intellectual superiority". All life (I will grudgingly accept limiting it to humans for this discussion) has equal value regardless of perceived intellect. I may be good at growing plants, you may be good at researching nuclear fusion. This does not make either intellectually superior (ego and god complexes notwithstanding).
Second, books in bookshelves have value beyond the $ value or content of the books in them. At minimum it's an interior design tool that brings life and warmth to an otherwise soul- and lifeless house (look at houses on YT with a value > $10m. - virtuall all of them clinically and lifelessly designed by "x" who is "amazing darling").
Books do what a drawing of your child does when framed and hung on a wall - they make a house look lived in. The people in it automatically gain depth that a framed photo by some famous photographer of a landscape or half-naked person can never deliver.
Books can give insight not found on the Internet. King Rat, by James Clavell (himself a former prisoner of Changi) gives insights that are rare as hens' teeth on the Internet, if they exist there at all. Another stand-out is The Ugly American which surfaces some uncomfortable truths that can alter lives. And they start conversations, excercising intellects.
Finally, worth. A book in the 21st century is worth at least as much as a movie. I say at least because it has secondary benefits like improving grammar, spelling and sometimes writing style. I don't believe a Twitter feed or blog can match a good book for unadulterated storytelling.
- I was 9 when he published Hitchhiker's guide. I'd just started reading and would go on to spend my teens reading ANYTHING I managed to lay my hands on. And throughout my teens everyone went on and on about Hitchhiker's Guide, and it just didn't... push me to read it. I eventually read it after being consrcipted. And it left me feeling as ambivalent as I felt before reading it.
As the comments here evidence, people read much into it, and the number 42. This is great. I felt books like The Ugly American [0], Honey Badger (Robert Ruark) and King Rat [1] had more to offer. My opinion hasn't much changed - but I feel the problem lies with me, in that depth and meaning are what I value.
Is humour the entirety of the draw for Hitchhiker's Guide, or (probably more likely) have I missed something?
