King Rat (Asian Saga) Mass Market Paperback – September 1, 1986

I read this book 30+ years ago and remembered it as a favorite. It did not disappoint on the reread. Human nature doesn’t change. A fascinating story.

Just another in the series it’s a good story so worth a re read

I still have my paperback copy from the original printing. Forty years later, or so, we've chosen King Rat for our book club, and I bought the updated copy. There is a very short introduction by Clavell's daughter, which is interesting, but the printing is odd. On the last page of the intro, now is shown as "no w" and more as "mo re". This may be a result of the Japanese or Malayan terms used in the book, but it is careless. My original paperback has no mistakes.This is Clavell's first novel, a fictionalization of his experience in the Changi POW camp during WWII. As ruthless as the Japanese are, this book does not focus on them. Rather it presents the story of survival under extreme circumstances. When your world is turned upside down, and endurance is tested to its limit, is it possible to survive? How? Some people die from the lack of will to live. Others steal and cheat. Others are endlesslly giving, even as they waste away. Some are very courageous and risk all. Some fall apart when caught, regardless of how selfless their crime. Others show icy resolve in the face of terror. A few actually come into their own. It is the very American New Yorker who exploits every opportunity. Surrounded by the English and their antiquated class system, the self-reliant kid from the slums of New York thrives in this environment. And for this he is hated. Even by his fellow Americans.The author writes in an immediate, simple style, with a fair amount of dialogue, so the story moves quickly. Although the issue of survivor's guilt is never addressed, it looms in the background of this complicated story. It's doubtful the very, very good would have survived.Some clever marketing person has packaged Clavell's novels as a "set." These books are not a set. They are four attempts to understand the Oriental mind. King Rat is the simplest of the books; Shogun the most complicated. I re-read Shogun every now and again to re-learn how the Japanese think. But it is so foreign to our Western way of thinking, that I cannot remember it over the years. Shogun is the best book I've ever seen on the Japanese. King Rat may be the best at how to survive in Hell.

I read King Rat (KR) shortly after it was first published. I remember thinking then that KR was an exciting book, but perhaps far-fetched, even if the author was a POW in Singapore. A decade later I was posted to Singapore, and met a few people who remembered the years of Japanese occupation, and some who were prisoners themselves. It seems that Mr. Clavell was not exaggerating.Having recently read a couple of volumes of the author's Asian Saga, I decided to read KR again. This edition has an informative foreword, in itself very good literary criticism, and some parts in the book which may not have been in the first edition - I am not entirely sure. This time around, the book struck me not merely exciting, but positively dramatic, and many scenes could indeed have been combined into a very dramatic play.As other reviewers have already described KR's background and plot, I would add only that character development is first rate, as are the sections depicting the lives and fates of the prisoners' families. Most of these are bleak, and some are not resolved, but there are few happy endings, apart from the fact that most of the main prisoner characters survived, a great accomplished in view of happened in Changi in 1942-45. It was a horrible place, and KR is its dramatic chronicle. One may perhaps also think of it as the requiem for the British Empire military, and certainly for the UK Army. In any case, I reckon KR is one of the most powerful novels from the Second World War, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

This is, and has been for 30 years, one of my all time favorite reads. Shogun, probably Clavell's best known book, is wonderful too but it's nearly 1,300 pages. This masterpiece is short and sweet and it lays to the bone the pain and suffering endured by the poor souls unlucky enough to find themselves confined in Changi prison camp and, even more horrific, Utram Road Prison..a place men are sent.. never to return. It has to be one of the best WWII books about the Allied soldiers captured by the Japanese. He doesn't pull any punches and yet he manages to find humor in among the horror these men endured. The author, himself a POW held by the Japanese, claims that while the settings are very real places, the characters and the story told are fictional; but it's difficult not to sense his own experiences coming through as he develops the characters inside these pages. It's an impossible book to put down once you start. It includes an unlikely buddy story and is full of subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, social commentary as well. The author's able to put you inside each man's mind and lets you view this nightmare world they're forced to live in through their very individual points of view. It's a cops and robbers story too and it's a wonderful example of capitalism at it's finest and at it's worse. It's about betrayal, devotion, loyalty, love and friendship. For such a small book, it packs an amazingly large punch!While it is not for the faint of heart, I still highly recommend it.

A sobering fact about life in a Japanese concentration camp.War is not so exciting as hollywood like you to believe.Pat

Viene descritto come puntata della "saga asiatica" in cui l'Autore affronta nel corso dei secoli i complessi rapporti tra il Giappone feudale e la Cina imperiale con quei mercanti occidentali in cerca di facili ricchezze esponenti di una civilizzazione assai diversa, con storie che arrivano praticamente ai giorni nostri. Qui abbiamo un'insolita storia frutto dell'esperienza come prigioniero di guerra durante la II Guerra Mondiale. Il contesto è quello un po' surreale de il Ponte sul Fiume Kwai, in cui i prigionieri sembrano succubi della situazione "assecondando" il nemico, piuttosto che combatterlo come descritto negli innumerevoli film e romanzi ambientati nei campi di concentramento europei. Come spesso avviene nei libri di Clavell, gli americani hanno un ruolo ambiguo, a metà tra l'amico e il nemico. Edizione in lingua originale in offerta kindle.

This novel - really different from the others of the saga, more "historic" and less clan story - is as the others ones very interesting and captivating.. I've learned a lot, thanks !

Das erste Buch von James Clavell ist ein wunderbares Erstwerk. Auch wenn es zur Asia-Reihe des Autors gezählt wird, kann dieses Buch getrennt davon sehr gut bestehen oder als Einstieg in den noch nicht stark ausgeprägten Erzählstil von Clavell gelesen werden. Es werden in den chronologisch vorher angelegten Werken keinerlei Verbindungen zu Personen aus diesem Buch geknüpft oder geschaffen.Die Handlung des Buches ist äußerst spannend und lässt den Leser sich gut in die Personen im Kriegsgefangenenlager hineinversetzen. Die Alltäglichkeit, die einem als Leser zunächst negativ berührt, wird schnell als Normalität war genommen und das tägliche Ringen ums überleben wird auf Banalitäten beschränkt. Die Geschichte fokusiert dadurch auf drei Charaktere, dem Rechtschaffenden, den "König" der Gefangenen und auf den Normalen, der zwischen beiden Lagern steht. Inhaltlich werden Themen und Episoden über Moral, Ethik, Flexibilität und Ohnmacht unter äußersten Umständen dieses Lagers beschrieben und wie einige davon profitieren und andere daran zerbrechen. Auch die Auflösung der Geschichte macht auch nochmals die Probleme am Ende eines solchen Gefangenenlagers deutlich.Rundum ein wirklich packendes Werk, das man gut über Stunden aber auch Monate geniessen kann.

An excellent tale. Clavell said somewhere that all his novels were actually a number of short stories strung together. That applies to this novel, certainly, though not in a disparaging way at all. The story of men stuck in a prisoner-of-war camp in Japanese-occupied Singapore. For three years. Naturally, the novel is episodic. The title refers to a character, an American corporal, called King, who is also a kind of king in the camp. He's a fixer, a dealer. He can find anything, sell anything. He lives a life of relative luxury in the camp, where the prison-camp economics reign.The king is one of the main characters. The other main character is a British RAF officer, Philip Marlowe, brought up in a military family with a long history of military service, and filled with a typical British snobbery about money and trade. Marlowe is both attracted and repelled by the King: repelled by his apparently totally mercenary attitude to life, and attracted by his brimming confidence and dare-devil risk-taking. In time, they become firm friends, and the King saves Marlowe from losing a limb, thanks to his skills in wheeling and dealing and prison-camp survival.The "rat" in the title refers to an episode when the King and his "unit" get the idea of breeding rats under one of the huts and selling the meat. Only they won't tell anyone what kind of meat it really is, and they will only sell it to people they hate, which means the officers. Given the title, the reader may believe this episode is going to become central to the entire novel, but it doesn't. It fizzles out and is superseded by other story threads. It surfaces briefly from time to time, and then is brought up again in an odd codicil to the novel which runs rather counter to the mood and tone of the novel. Marlowe slowly learns that the wheeling and dealing the King does is really a highly sophisticated activity requiring quick reflexes and great intelligence and cunning, not one for the weak or the faint-hearted. In addition, the King actually does a lot of good, for many of his schemes involve food and medicines, and he can get these to people who need them when everyone else has failed. However, the codicil suggests that the King was just top of the heap in a rat-eat-rat world, which is not what the reader deduces from the various episodes involving the King and Marlowe. The rats may perhaps refer to human beings generally, not just the main characters and not just the prisoners in the camp. All fighting each other just for survival.All in all, it is a remarkable story, unlike many POW stories. It is remarkably upbeat and full of life. The shock and incomprehension when the camp is liberated at the end of the war is superbly managed, and the scenes of suspense are also excellent.