DAIKON

DAIKON is a sweeping historical novel about love in a time of war, set in the early days of August 1945 in Japan, when the greatest destruction the world had ever known has been unleashed, and only one man holds the key to end the war - and save his family - when American's deadliest weapon falls into the hands of the Japanese military.

War has taken everything from physicist Keizo Kan - his young daughter was killed in a Tokyo air raid, and now his grieving wife has been arrested by the brutal Thought Police. His only hope of freeing her is by cooperating with the Imperial Army, who need him to examine a new weapon recovered from the wreckage of a downed American plane - an unfamiliar bomb containing uranium. As he is pulled deeper and deeper into the military's plans for this bomb, he must fight to escape and reunite with his wife, before they join the countless lives sacrificed for the sake of never-ending war. Samuel Hawley began researching for Daikon in 1996, inspired by the question: what if an American atomic bomb had fallen into the hands of the Japanese military? The idea for the novel never left him, and over the years he steadily made progress in his intensive research and character development, until he succeeded in writing the book that would become Daikon. Hawley is a Canadian writer with BA and MA degrees in history from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He was born and grew up in South Korea and taught English there and in Japan for many years. He currently lives in Istanbul, Turkey.