If you watched the movie "Over the River Kwai," you have seen how Hollywood can take liberties with the truth. This book is the author's real experiences in a deadly jungle camp during WWII. It does not dwell on the excruciating details of torture and mistreatment, but I still found it difficult to read sometimes. Man's inhumanity to man!! The author was an agnostic who was transformed by the Christlike attitudes and behavior of two of his fellow sufferers. (He later became a minister in the Church of Scotland and dean of the chapel at Princeton in the USA. That's long after the events in the book, but I was encouraged by his triumphal use of the horrific events of his life.)