Ray Parkin's Odyssey

Of all the myriad stories to emerge from the chaos and horror of the Second World War, that of Ray Parkin’s is perhaps the most fascinating and illuminating.

A self-educated Petty Officer, Ray Parkin developed into one of the most acute chroniclers of the POW experience in Java, The Thai-Burma Railway and Japan, writing three classic books on his experiences. He was also an artist of note, and his visual record of those years serves as one of the most powerful and moving accounts of their experience.

This is the first biography of this extraordinary man – a battler from a working class suburb of Melbourne who was to become the most unlikely of friends with Weary Dunlop and Laurens van der Post, and whose words, drawings and paintings form the greatest Australian chronicle of those years of horror.