Brother Fish by Bryce Courtney

I heard the audio book version, some 31 hours while driving the car (I am a busy profssional and dont have time to read). Great story, great historical backdrop and lovely characterisations. The story illustrates the Korean War friendship of Jacko, the Aussie, Negro 'Jim' in a POW camp, and then (post war), of the 'Countess', who has an extraordinary (and otherwise hidden) Russian/Chinese heritage.

Incredibly diverse and unlikely combination of friends, none the less brought together with great depth and clarity. Great humanistic themes, including a different view of polemic (war) heroism (ie compared to the usual war heroes paradigm portrayed in most contemporary stories). Interesting discriminatory parallels between Aboriginal struggle in Australia, negroes in USA, and white Russians in Shanghai. Bryce Courtney is a wonderful Australian writer, (a friend of mine mentioned he lives nearby in Bondi?). I thoroughly enjoyed it and will endeavour to read/listen to more of his writings.

If this had been my first introduction to To BC's writing I would not have got very far before putting it down. It took some time before it evolved that it was not all about war.
The constant switching back and forth between the present and the past lacked continuity and affected the bonding by the reader to the main characters.
A common BC syntax error of split infinitives can be overlooked but not when the parrot repeats a phrase supposedly taken from Mrs Worthington's perfect upper class 1920's English grammar lesson states 'You will learn to correctly clip some words and others you shall round.' The use of split infinitives originates from America and only recently have become a common error in both written and spoken language.
Should read ... to clip correctly....