To The River Kwai: Two Journeys 1943,1979
London: Bloomsbury, 1988. First Edition. SIGNED by the author along with his London address. 8vo. 175 pp. Photo-illustrated plates. Red cloth in color illustrated dust jacket. Small stain on ffep else fine in fine dust jacket (with a hint of wear to spine ends). Item #22981
John Stewart was born in France in 1919. His extraordinary life has seen Japanese PoW camps, encounters with Picasso and Matisse, and a long stint shooting the fashion and business elite of New York. He's also won acclaim as one of the finest practitioners of the still life. In this memoir, John Stewart explores the truth and myth of "The Bridge on the River Kwai". Taken prisoner in Singapore in 1942, John Stewart learned Japanese and became an interpreter. He was one of the few survivors (just over one in ten) of the Sonkurai camp on the Burma-Siam railway. While a Japanese prisoner he kept a diary. His notes serve as a background to this account and as a source of meditation on his Japanese captors. What to think of a Japanese Colonel who cried when a British officer accused him of bad faith? Or a Camp Commandant who, on the point of beheading a couple of prisoners (the author being one of them), changed his mind and invited them to share his sake? Over 40 years later, the author returned to the Kwai, going beyond Sonkurai and into Burma with the guerrillas, ostensibly to see if the report of a steel bridge still standing in the jungle was true but also to reflect on his past experiences.
Price: $150.00