Inside a bunker, a fat man guarded by Japanese soldiers lies pinkly naked. Something strange is happening: "He remembers how it was to explode. It was everything coming out everywhere. Shit and piss and puke and blood and scream. It was being the world…. It was like being born." Then he's rescued by a skinny little boy who says, "So, you are my brother." Yes, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have come to life and bond closely as they stumble through a smoking, hostile landscape, trying to make sense of the world. Eventually, they flee to France and then America to submerge their dark past.
VERDICT Not for fans of routine war novels, this Horatio Nelson Prize winner is an imaginative and surprisingly intimate look at the consequences of our actions and the costs of war.
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