A Novel.
'We were wading, backs to shore, into body-temperature seas, sun shining, waters so clear I watched my black leather shoes, submerged, grinding fragments of bleached coral into sand. Of twenty-three of us, I was the only one granted reprieve back then, it was mid-February, 1942 - the bullet went in the back and came out the front - these words of mine have been recorded, taken down in the courtroom.'
At Banka Island, Indonesia, during the Second World War, Japanese soldiers ordered twenty-three Australian nurses to wade into the sea, where they were then machine-gunned down. There were thought to be no survivors. But the bullet went through Vivien Carmichael, and she lived. This is a true story.
Saskia Beudel's astonishing debut novel fictionalises that day, and the events that followed. 'Borrowed Eyes' tells the stories of Viv and her Dutch friend Martin, who meet up again several years after the war, when Viv is living back in rural Victoria. Their shared experiences while interned in a POW camp in Indonesia, and the effects of war and its aftermath, are to resonate through their lives.
