By sheer coincidence, last week on August 6th, I bought Richard Flannagan's most recent book Question 7. Richard, one of Australia's most distinguished authors and a Booker Prize winner, has often talked about his father, who was a POW in Japan during the last part of the second world war and faced inhumane conditions in captivity. Had the war lasted a bit longer, he would not have survived the harsh conditions of the winter in the camp.

This genre defining book, which is part memoir, part history and part reflection on the state of the world, asks deep and difficult questions. Richard knows that his father was able to find freedom largely due to one of the most horrific acts of the 20th century - the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed well over a hundred thousand innocent people in an instant. Many more suffered for the rest of their lives.........

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