Sisters under the Rising Sun

The phenomenal new novel of resilience and survival from bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Heather Morris.

In the midst of WWII, an English mother, Norah, places her eight-year-old daughter Sally on a ship leaving Malaya, desperate to keep her safe from the Japanese army as they move down through the Pacific, swiftly overrunning the Allied forces. Norah then flees, knowing she may never see her child again.

In Singapore, a Welsh-Australian nurse, Nesta, has enlisted to tend to Allied troops. But as the island falls to the Japanese she joins the terrified cargo of people, including the heartbroken Norah, crammed aboard the Vyner Brooke merchant ship. Only two days later, they are bombarded from the air off the coast of Indonesia, and in a matter of hours, the Vyner Brooke lies broken on the seabed.

After surviving a brutal 24 hours in the sea, Nesta and Norah reach the beaches of an Indonesian island, only to be captured by the Japanese and held in one of their notorious Prisoner of War camps. The camps are places of starvation and brutality, where disease runs rampant. Sisters in arms, Norah and Nesta fight side by side every day, helping whoever they can, and discovering in themselves and each other extraordinary reserves of courage, resourcefulness and determination.

Sisters under the Rising Sun is a story of women in war: a novel of sisterhood, bravery and friendship in the darkest of circumstances, from the multimillion-copy bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilka's Journey and Three Sisters.