A Bar of Shadow - Laurens van der Post - FIRST EDITION

FIRST EDITION, The Hogarth Press, 1954, hardcover, 59 pages, booksellers label, chain paper stock, dust jacket(dj) protector, slight stains to first page of story and opposite page. some edgeware & loss to lower edge of front of dj, otherwise condition: very good.

Dedicated to William Plomer, legendary SA editor (Goldfinger is dedicated to him by Fleming), the story first appeared in 'The Cornhill' magazine.

This is the story of Hara, a Japanese sergeant in virtual command of a prisoner-of-war camp. It is more than a little autobiographical for Colonel van der Post was himself a prisoner in the Far East. The book is a penetrating study of the Japanese mentality, the Japanese myth, as personified by this demonic, naive, brutal, weirdly idealistic sergeant. How Hara's curiosity about Father Christmas saves a British Prisoner from the death-cell, and how this officer later spoke up for his torturer at a War Crimes Tribunal, provide the climaxes of a book which proves once again that truth is far stranger than fiction. But A Bar of Shadow does something more. It shows that men not only must but can love their and it shows how this most difficult love may be achieved by a courageous imaginative understanding.