James Clavell - King Rat (1962)

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I'm going to get that bloody bastard if I die in the attempt.

James Clavell
For Those Who Were There
And Are Not.
For Those Who Were There And Are
For Him. But Most,
For Her.

James Clavell
Grey was not alone in his hatred. The whole of Changi hated King. They hated him for his muscular body, the clear glow in his blue eyes. In the twilight world of the half alive there were no fat or well-built or round or smooth or fair-built or thick-built men. There were only faces dominated by eyes and set on bodies that were skin over sinews and bones. No difference between them but age and face and height. And in all this world, only the King ate like a man, smoked like a man, slept like a man, dreamed like a man and looked like a man.

James Clavell
Changi was set like a pearl on the eastern tip of Singapore Island, iridescent under the bowl of tropical skies. It stood on a slight rise and around it was a belt of green, and farther off the green gave way to the blue-green seas and the seas to infinity of horizon.
Closer, Changi lost its beauty and became what it was — an obscene forbidding prison. Cellblocks surrounded by sun-baked courtyards surrounded by towering walls.
Inside the walls, inside the cellblocks, story on story, were cells for two thousand prisoners at capacity. Now, in the cells and in the passageways and in every nook and cranny lived some eight thousand men....
These men too were criminals. Their crime was vast. They had lost a war. And they had lived.

James Clavell
Changi for me — of course it's easy to be wise after the event, and to discuss it cleverly after the event — was about as near as you can get to being dead and still be alive.

James Clavell
When you have an enemy it is wise to know his ways. The King knew as much about Grey as any man could know about another.

James Clavell
Guard yourself and your conscience no one else will and know that a bad decision at the right time can destroy you far more surely than any bullet!

James Clavell
And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.

James Clavell