Black Sun, Red Moon: A Novel of WWII Japanese Java / Black Sun, Red Moon (ePub)

A Japanese prison camp... A mother needing medicines... A teenage girl with only one thing left to sell... An enemy determined to buy...

"Exquisitely written…an exciting and exactingly brutal slice of history…" - BookLife by Publishers Weekly Prize in Fiction

Five lives caught in a maelstrom:

Kate van Dam is struggling to survive the squalor and deprivation of an internment camp. Faced with a sick mother, little food and medicines she accepts the dubious offer of 'hostess work' at Japanese officers' club....

Japan's surrender saves Lt Kenichi Ota from a suicidal last stand. But to save the woman he loves he will have to draw his sword once again...

Highlander Alun MacDonald has had his fill of the British Army but now faces a new, unpredictable foe and must trust his former enemies with his life...

Lamban longs for independence for Indonesia. A chance encounter with an activist plunges him into a teeming, dangerous world of secret societies, plots and the whirlwind of revolution....

War Correspondent Meg Graham is expecting to cover Japan's defeat. Instead she is pitched into a ruthless struggle for an empire unrestrained by rules of war.

"An ambitious, unconventional, compelling saga of men at war, captivity, forced prostitution, murder, political dirty tricks and mob terror in Japanese-occupied and revolutionary Indonesia. Rory Marron's Black Sun, Red Moon and Merdeka Rising give us an almost tangible glimpse of the chaos that was Java in 1945-46. His writing, infused with imaginative speculation, is sweeping, poignant, passionate and unflinching."(Publisher's Catalogue)

"I was there! Excellent, almost true story… I can vouch for many of the things that happened." - Amazon Customer Review

"The pace zips along…" - Army Rumour Service (UK)

"A good, realistic account based on actual events. Well worth reading!" - Stuart Guild (27th Field Regiment Royal Artillery, Burma 1944-45)

Japan's sudden surrender ends the Second World War but triggers the Indonesian declaration of independence from the Netherlands, catching the returning Dutch and 'Southeast Asia's peacekeepers', the British, by surprise. In a chaotic, mistrustful peace the British order the Japanese to defend the white colonial order. Recent foes have no choice but to become allies...of a kind. In greatest peril are 80,000 European women and children interned by the Japanese. Defenceless, abandoned and half-starved, some of them former sex slaves of the Japanese, they become hostages to fortune. As their former guards become their guardians, protecting them from hostile mobs, hatreds and prejudices are hastily re-examined. British, Gurkha and Indian troops, veterans of the bitter Burma campaign, arrive in Java expecting a warm welcome, grateful civilians and easy duties. Very soon their orders are rewritten, their mission and motives questioned, as they face determined, frequently suicidal opposition…