King Rat

King Rat is a 1962 novel by James Clavell and his literary debut. It is set during the Second World War and describes the struggle for survival of American, Australian, British, Dutch and New Zealander prisoners of war in a Japanese camp in Singapore.

The camp is organised by scarcity. King, an American corporal, has made himself the man who can get things, running a trade in food, watches and anything else that can be exchanged, and he lives better than the officers around him. When Peter Marlowe arrives and is taken into King's circle, the novel shows how the arrangement works, what the other prisoners make of it, and whether Marlowe will become part of it.

Clavell drew on his own experience as a prisoner of war, and the book's interest is in the moral position of a man who survives by being useful to everybody and loyal to nobody. It was followed by a long career of historical novels, and it remains the book that established his reputation as a teller of Pacific war stories.