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|title=The Flowers of War

|sort=Flowers of War, The

|publisher=Vintage

|date=January 2013

|summary=An account of the horrors of the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nanking, the surface simplicity of this book masks a powerful exploration of the bravery of human beings faced with an intolerable situation.

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1937, Nanking. The war between the Republic of China and Japan has ended in defeat for China, and now Japanese soldiers are moving in to bloodily occupy the capital city. In a small American mission church, fifteen Chinese schoolgirls are hiding, trapped until the priests who look after them can smuggle them to safety. Into this already fraught atmosphere come desperate Chinese citizens looking for shelter – a rowdy group of Nanking prostitutes, a colonel on the run and two more soldiers who have survived a horrendous secret massacre. As the Japanese atrocities gather pace, the safety and survival of each of the church’s disparate members becomes uncertain, and the initially hostile girls begin to realise that there may be common ground between them and the prostitutes they have been taught to despise.