The Purple Plain
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: bce
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Yellowed
Set against the scorched and unforgiving landscape of wartime Burma, The Purple Plain is a masterwork of psychological survival that chronicles the slow, painful resurrection of a man determined to die. Squadron Leader Forrester, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot broken by the death of his young wife in a bombing raid, has become a reckless daredevil, courting death on every mission — until a forced landing deep in the Burmese wilderness, alongside two injured companions and a dwindling hope of rescue, forces him to choose between surrender and survival. H.E. Bates, drawing on his wartime service as an RAF short story writer, constructs a narrative of extraordinary psychological intensity, where the brutal terrain itself becomes both antagonist and unlikely healer. A luminous work of mid-century British fiction, the novel illustrates Bates's singular gift for weaving lush, sensory prose with an unflinching examination of grief, endurance, and the will to live. The vast, shimmering Burmese plain — purple and alien under a merciless sun — serves as a crucible in which a shattered man is either unmade or reforged, and the answer is never as certain as it seems. For readers who relish the intersection of war, nature, and the indomitable human spirit, The Purple Plain remains a quietly devastating and deeply humane classic that lingers long after the final page.
Author: H.E. Bates
Format: Hardback
Published: 1947, Little, Brown and Company (An Atlantic Monthly Press Book)
Genre: Historical fiction
Edition: bce
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Yellowed
Set against the scorched and unforgiving landscape of wartime Burma, The Purple Plain is a masterwork of psychological survival that chronicles the slow, painful resurrection of a man determined to die. Squadron Leader Forrester, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot broken by the death of his young wife in a bombing raid, has become a reckless daredevil, courting death on every mission — until a forced landing deep in the Burmese wilderness, alongside two injured companions and a dwindling hope of rescue, forces him to choose between surrender and survival. H.E. Bates, drawing on his wartime service as an RAF short story writer, constructs a narrative of extraordinary psychological intensity, where the brutal terrain itself becomes both antagonist and unlikely healer. A luminous work of mid-century British fiction, the novel illustrates Bates's singular gift for weaving lush, sensory prose with an unflinching examination of grief, endurance, and the will to live. The vast, shimmering Burmese plain — purple and alien under a merciless sun — serves as a crucible in which a shattered man is either unmade or reforged, and the answer is never as certain as it seems. For readers who relish the intersection of war, nature, and the indomitable human spirit, The Purple Plain remains a quietly devastating and deeply humane classic that lingers long after the final page.