A Chain Reaction by Peter Leyland
A Chain Reaction How our interests define us. I was thinking about the horrors of war, the reality of which is all around us on the news at present and briefly interrupted by a worldwide lament for the death of Pope Francis. This year is the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War with Victory in Europe (VE Day) and Victory over Japan (VJ Day) approaching, and I have been reading recently Question 7 by Richard Flanagan, who was a Booker Prize Winner in 2014 for his novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North , a book which concerned the horror of the Japanese military’s treatment of prisoners during The Second World War. The author had been inspired to write the novel after listening to his father’s tale of experiences in a Japanese POW camp and fictionalising them. I h...