The Seed and the Sower The Seed and the Sower The Seed and the Sower is a book by South African writer Laurens van der Post, consisting of three interrelated stories blended into a novel, first published in 1963. The novel was filmed in 1983 as "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence", directed by Nagisa Oshima and starring David Bowie, Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Takeshi Kitano. The first story is set in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp in Java during World War II and is a first person account of the relationship between John Lawrence, a British officer, and Sergeant Hara, one of the camp’s
Laurens van der Post Van der Post retired from the army and was made a CBE. The events of these early post-war years in Java are examined in his memoir "The Admiral's Baby" (1996). With the war over and his business with the army concluded, van der Post returned to South Africa in late 1947 to work at the "Natal Daily News", but with the election victory of the National Party and the onset of apartheid he came back to London. He was later to publish a critique of apartheid ("The Dark Eye in Africa", 1955), basing many of his insights on his developing