A choice of evils - Meira Chand

Against the backdrop of Japan's invasion of China in the late 1930s to the Tokyowar crimes trials in 1946 a drama of comples human relationships unfolds. Meira Chand's new novel is about the evils of war and how it affects the livesof a disparate group of characters brought together by the Japanese attempt to conquer China between the mid 1930s and 1945. The principals include a mysterious, young Russian woman emigre,a Japanese dipolmat with a liberal conscience, an American missionary/doctor, a British journalist, an Indian nationalist and a Chinese professor. Their lives intersect at the siege ofNanking, where more than 300,000 Chinese died in an orgy ofofficially condoned slaughter at the hands of the marauding Japenese army. All must turn to the deepest part of themselves to find a way to survive........