The Railway Man

Throughout his childhood Eric Lomax possessed a passion for trains. In an ironic twist of fate, he was captured by the Japanese during World War II and sent to Thailand to work on the infamous Burma-Siam railroad, the barbaric project that claimed the lives of 250,000 men. There he constructed a radio to bring news of the war and secretly drew a map of the railroad. For this, Lomax suffered brutal and incessant torture and interrogation. Standing by through it all was Nagase Takashi, a young Japanese soldier who translated the captor's questions and Lomax's replies. Fifty years later, Lomax sought out this Japanese tormentor, meeting him on a hillside overlooking the River Kwai Bridge. But Lomax's object in meeting Takashi again was not revenge. It was reconciliation. Here is a remarkable true story of forgiveness - a tremendous testament to the courage that propels one toward remembrance, and finally, peace with the past. A classic war autobiography, The Railway Man is a powerful tale of survival and of the human capacity to understand even those who have done us unthinkable harm.
[Lomax] has a straightforward story and he tells it quietly and with dignity. But at the end one feels the old dramatic shock: an amazed, even fearful suspicion that the curtain on eternity was pulled back slightly, for a moment....