'There followed a blue flash accompanied by a very bright magnesium-type flare … Then came a frighteningly loud but rather flat explosion, which was followed by a blast of hot air … All this was followed by eerie silence.'

So Cork doctor Aidan MacCarthy described the explosion of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki in August 1945, just over a mile from where he was trembling in a makeshift bomb shelter in the Mitsubishi POW camp. This is the compelling story of the wartime adventures of Dr Aidan MacCarthy, who survived the evacuation at Dunkirk, burning planes, sinking ships, jungle warfare and appalling privation as a Japanese prisoner of war. It is a story of survival, forgiveness and humanity at its most admirable.