The island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll was defended by the elite troops of the Special Naval Landing Force, whose commander, Admiral Shibasaki, boasted that the Americans could not take Tarawa with a million men in a hundred years. In a pioneering amphibious invasion, the Marines of the 2nd Division set out to prove him wrong, overcoming serious planning errors to fight a 76-hour battle of unprecedented savagery. The cost would be more than 3000 Marine casualties at the hands of a garrison of some 3700. The lessons learned would dispel forever any illusions that Americans had about the fighting quality of the Japanese.
William Golding's classic novel of primitive savagery and survival is one of the most vividly realised and riveting works in modern fiction. The tale begins after a plane wreck deposits a group of English school boys, aged six to twelve on an isolated tropical island. Their struggle to survive and impose order quickly evolves from a battle against nature into a battle against their own primitive instincts. Golding's portrayal of the collapse of social order into chaos draws the fine line between innocence and savagery.
Added by: oksana_ukma | Karma: 13.56 | Fiction literature | 19 February 2009
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One of the most famous Le Carre's spy novels. It is a controversial fiction about Israeli-Palestinian conflict which upon its publication managed to offend both Palestinians and Israelis by presenting the justice of both of their causes and the savagery of both sides' methods.
