About this item
Under the Sun is set in the closing stages of World War Two in the South Pacific. Flight Lieutenant Edward Strickland is a young RAF Spitfire pilot flying sorties over the Carolines and their outlying atolls. On a dawn patrol he is shot down attacking a submarine and ends up on a remote island occupied by a small Japanese garrison, that has remained undetected throughout the war. The garrison's commander Captain Tadashi Hayama brutally interrogates his captive and a battle of wills develops between the two men. The scene is set for a contest where there will only be one victor. But events take an unexpected turn and the island becomes, for a while, a kind of Eden. The war is a distant memory that has no relevance to the rhythms and echoes of island life.
About the Author
Justin Kerr-Smiley was born in 1965 and brought up in Scotland. He was educated at Ampleforth and Newcastle University. Awarded a BBC bursary for post graduate studies in journalism, he worked as a radio reporter in Sydney and London. He then spent 15 years with Associated Press Television News and reported from Northern Ireland, the Balkans and South America. His first novel 'Under The Sun' is published by Arcadia. The Sunday Telegraph described it as: 'a small masterpiece; the best novel that I have read about war since Captain Corelli's Mandolin.' In 2011 he received a travel scholarship from the Society of Authors in order to research 'Goodbye To The President', a novel about the 1973 coup in Chile, published in December 2014.
