SOURCE: Buruma, Ian. “Workers & Warriors.” New York Review of Books 37, no. 12 (19 July 1990): 43-5.

In the following review, Buruma identifies thematic parallels between The Fugitive and David Malouf's The Great World.

In March, 1940, a group of thirteen-year-old Javanese boys emerged from the playground of their school in Jogjakarta. They were rounded up by Japanese soldiers, sealed in a cargo train without anything to eat or drink, and taken to Batavia, where they were added to eight thousand other Indonesians. They were then put on two ships bound for Singapore. One was sunk by a torpedo, four thousand drowned. The rest got off in Sumatra, where they were put to work on a railway line. But first the Japanese guards gave them a little demonstration. Eight boys were ordered to lift up a track. When this proved impossible, the Japanese decreased their number, until there were only four. When they...