**Winner of the 1952 Yomiuri Prize**

This haunting novel explores the complete degradation and isolation of a man by war. Fires on the Plain is set on the island of Leyte in the Philippines during World War II, where the Japanese army is disintegrating under the hammer blows of the American landings. Within this larger disintegration is another, that of a single human being, Private Tamura. The war destroys each of his ties to society,...