Bitter Eden

In this frank and beautifully written novel, Tatamkhulu Afrika revisits his experiences as an allied prisoner of war after the fall of Tobruk in North Africa in 1942. The book reveals the complex rituals of camp life and the diversion of the POW theatre. It lays bare the terrible cruelties, but also the strange loyalties and deep bonds the men know will never be replicated when they return home. BITTER EDEN is a tender, bitter, powerful book, of lives inexorably changed, of a war whose ending does not bring peace. More than simply 'war' literature, or 'gay' literature, this is a deeply moving, human work about the meaning of love and what it is to be a man.