Penang, 1939. Sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton is a loner. Half English, half Chinese and feeling neither, he discovers a sense of belonging in an unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and in return Endo trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. The enigmatic Endo is bound...

Malaya, 1949, and Yun Ling Teoh, a Cambridge law graduate who's spent time helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, has returned to the jungle-fringed plantations of her childhood.