The Caprices: Stories

Boston: Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002. 1st Printing. Trade Paperback. Very Good. 5x0x8. First printing. Pages faintly toned. 2002 Trade Paperback. 210 pp. 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.