A powerful novel about the memory of war, and how people bring that memory back to the world of peace, from Orange-prize shortlisted author Georgina Harding.
Dawn, mist clearing over the rice fields, a burning Vietnamese village, and a young war photographer gets the shot that might make his career. The image, of a staring soldier in the midst of mayhem, will become one of the great photographs of the war. But what Jonathan has seen in that village is more than he can bear, and he flees.
He drifts on to Japan, to lose himself in the vastness of Tokyo, where there are different kinds of photographs to be taken—pictures of crowds and subways and cherry blossoms. And innumerable pictures of Kumiko, the girl with whom he is no longer lost. But even here, in this alien city, his history catches up with him: the photograph and his responsibility in taking it, his responsibility as a witness to war, and as a witness to other events buried far deeper in his past.
The Gun Room is a powerful exploration of image and memory, and of the moral and emotional complexities of the experience of war.