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"1942: Boldly advancing through Asia, the Japanese need a train route from Burma going north. In a prison camp, British POWs are forced into labor. The bridge they build will become a symbol of service and survival to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Pitted against the warden, Colonel Saito, Nicholson will nevertheless, out of a distorted sense of duty, aid his enemy. While on the outside, as the Allies race to destroy the bridge, Nicholson must decide which will be the first casualty: his patriotism or his pride." (From Amazon.com)
I chose to read The Bridge Over the River Kwai
for the War Through the Generations Challenge because it showed the war from a perspective that had nothing to do with the Germans or the Holocaust. I wanted something totally different. I had never seen the movie either, so I had no idea what to expect.What a got was tale of heroism, stoicism, tragedy and the folly of war that surprised me with how much I enjoyed it. The characters were well-rounded enough to become real people for a few warm spring hours and their plight was just complicated enough to keep me suitably uneasy. I was sad to see it end the way it did, which is quite different from the movie from what I understand, but I found certain portions of the plot just unrealistic enough that the harsher ending gave the entire book more credibility. I don't mean to diminish what this story has to say about war. It is simply that while it was a very good book and well worth reading, it just wasn't as powerful as some of the other WWII novels I've read lately.
Just an aside -- Did you know Pierre Boulle also wrote Planet of the Apes
? Me neither. Now I have to read that, too! :-)
and 
. I figured I couldn't go wrong with a novel of WWII by him. I was absolutely correct.
, but I was completely immersed in the action. He makes you feel you're in the tank, trudging through the desert. He makes you feel you are the one deciding to open fire on enemy soldiers and he makes you feel the remorse when it's over. You are face to face with Field Marshall Rommel and you are remembering the men you fought beside and the men who died on both sides.
is the story of the survival of both his body and his humanity. It does not dwell on the deaths, the gas chambers and ovens. It shows the reader how he and a number of others endured sickness and deprivation, cheated "selections", and sometimes just through sheer "dumb luck" lived to tell their own stories.
is much more subtle than the previous two books in this trilogy, 
and 
. In fact, it would be very easy to breeze through these 120 or so pages and end up wondering what the big deal is. The heinous things the narrator saw in his life are never discussed, only hinted at. The reader must use his or her own knowledge to fully absorb the questions posed. How does a person go on living after experiencing something like the Holocaust? How does one view normal, daily life as anything but completely frivolous?
shows you the war from the viewpoints of a Scottish POW, an escaped Jewish man masquerading in various personae as he desperately searches for a way to safety so he can tell the world what is happening to his people, a displaced Prussian family in denial about what the Reich is doing, and a Jewish woman on a death march from a concentration camp. It does not shy away from the brutalities committed by any party, and readers not prepared for the ugliness will probably have a tough time. But there is also hope and faith and loyalty, love and kindness, courage and sacrifice of the highest order.
