Awards
Winner of the 2003 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Synopses & Reviews
From an acclaimed young author of Filipino background comes this history told through individual lives.
The Caprices revolves around the Pacific Campaign of World War II. In the wreckage of bombed cities and overcrowded prison camps, there were no winners and no conquerors, and no nation truly triumphed.
Set in Southeast Asia, Australia, and the United States, these stories bring to life ordinary people who must rely on extraordinary measures of faith and imagination. In "Order of Precedence," an Indian officer starving to death in a prison camp remembers playing polo during his days in India. In "Folly," the last days of Amelia Earhart are imagined as the Japanese prepare for war. In "Colossus," an American veteran in his eighties recalls the Japanese invasion of the Philippines and the infamous death march of 1941.
With lyrical prose and searing insight, Sabina Murray brings to light a complex cast of characters. Eloquent, artful, and brimming with raw emotion, these tales capture the gross injustices of war as well as the consequences of survival and the memories that follow. In stories that tell as much about the fluid nature of time as they do about the ghosts that haunt survivors, Sabina Murray establishes herself as a passionate and wise voice.
Review
"A caprice in wartime may be a sinister thing or a necessary distraction, and in this shrewd, striking debut collection of nine short stories by novelist and screenwriter Murray it is frequently both." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Sabina Murray grew up in Australia and the Phillippines. A former Michener Fellow at the University of Texas and Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University, she is the author of the novel Slow Burn. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Ontario Review, New England Review, and other magazines. She has also written a screenplay titled Beautiful Country, commissioned by Terence Malick and starring Nick Nolte. Murray is the Roger Murray Writer in Residence at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Contents
The Caprices 1 Order of Precedence 25 Guinea 55 Walkabout 77 Folly 101 Colossus 121 Yamashitas Gold 147 Intramuros 179 Position 195