Two reviews of Eaten by the Japanese

Two reviews came to my attention recently:

A review from a blogger/author ("Amazing book . . . finished it in one sitting."):
http://www.winnowed.blogspot.in/2012/07/book-review-eaten-by-japanese-memoir-of.html

And an older review by the erudite Professor of English Barry Fruchter, which was locked up in a storage facility in the New York region: please click on Page 1 and then Page 2 below. Exceptionally sensitive, detailed and sophisticated review:






 Below is Page 2. Please click on the image below, and clicking on CTRL + until you zoom in to read the text,, however, I also provide a quote below this.

Quotes from the review above:
"More than any book in recent memory, Eaten by the Japanese  drives home the lasting effects of enforced captivity – not only on the bodies but also on the minds of the prisoners. It is almost totally devoid of xenophobia directed either at the Japanese enslavers or at the British imperial military masters in whose name they were enslaved. Instead, it is a book about kindness, solidarity, and collective survival, about the bonds that matter: those between one single human being and another. It takes the tradition of the captivity narrative, with its built-in indictment of the “savage”, and turns it on his head to reveal an endorsement of the civilized. It is truly a testimony to truth.”

And on Page 1:


“What emerges in Crasta’s survivor’s tale is not a mere story of self but an epic of collective agony.  This is the story, then, of a nation’s agony as well as a man’s, a man’s survival as well as that of a nation’s, in both cases to await the next chapter in a complex narrative.”
 
In case this is difficult to read, please try to find this and other reviews here: http://bit.ly/eFzXjn

I am grateful for both of these reviews, because they expand the understanding of this book, which is available from http://www.richardcrasta.com/buybooks.htm or from:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004UBFXFC
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004UBFXFC
http://amzn.to/eWVexV
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50202
http://itunes.apple.com/uk/book/eaten-by-japanese-the-memoir/id436268256?mt=11
http://itunes.apple.com/au/book/eaten-by-japanese-the-memoir/id436268256?mt=11
http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/eaten-by-japanese-the-memoir/id436268256?mt=11
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eaten-by-the-japanese-richard-crasta/1100079610?ean=2940011274305

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The India Abroad and other reviews of "The Revised Kama Sutra""

Image
Like R. K. Narayan, who wrote in "My Days" that if he could have told the story of his novel "The Guide" in a few sentences, he wouldn't have taken 90,000 words to do it, I find myself at a loss to answer a question such as, "What is your novel about?"--when the question is put to me by a new acquaintance regarding my novel "The Revised Kama Sutra." I wish to reply: "Almost anything and everything you can think of!" Or: "It would be easier to tell you what it is NOT about." (Or, to the equally difficult question: "What do you write about?": "The sex life of mosquitoes." "The love lives of Chlamydomonas.") Anyway, on a recent trip to the U.S., I uncovered a few of my old reviews, and one of these was this review of "The Revised Kama Sutra" by Shivaji Sengupta in "India Abroad," New York., and think it is one of the most intelligent and well-phrased answers to this questio...
Read more

Sample Sunday Excerpt from THE REVISED KAMA SUTRA

Image
THE REVISED KAMA SUTRA has been published in 10 countries and was called "very funny" by Kurt Vonnegut. It is a big book, and many of the most energetic and exuberant passages occur after the first 50 to 70 pages. In this passage, Vijay, the protagonist, is around 16 years old and has just made his first (unsuccessful) attempt to lose his cherry with a hooker: Chapter 10 How to Succeed -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o- The confession had taken place on the very evening of the afternoon in which I had failed to unburden myself of my cherry. Heavy-handed Catholicism had captured and nailed down my sinning frame with Inquisitional power; within an hour, I had rushed to Jeppoo Church, a Portuguese-style structure coated with dark green moss and peeling yellow paint. Choosing the oldest and, I hoped, the deafest priest in this saint-rich church, I had confessed, shyly and mumblingly, my inept sin. It was 1969, the year Neil Arm...
Read more

The Strange World of an Indian Bestselling Author

From The Killing of an Author, published in paper and on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Nook, etc. Selected passages from one of the book's most important chapters. The trouble with any excerpt in a blog is that, I have to restrict the language here, and also that no excerpt can really convey the power of the book as the book itself (particularly later chapters such as "The Taboos" and "The System and the Killing of Subversive Authors"). An Author Is Born The Strange World of A Bestselling Indian Author Finally the book ["The Revised Kama Sutra: A Novel"] was finished, and it included a strong, in-your-face Prologue, a political manifesto on behalf of invisible Third World writers, a manifesto demanding equal freedom and incorporating The Invisible Man Press: “It is true that I, the author, have registered a publishing company in the United States called the Invisible Man Press because I felt that it was time for us Indians (incl...
Read more