Laurens van der Post (1963) and "The Night of the New Moon" (1970). Japanese film director Nagisa Oshima based his film "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" (1982) on the last two of these books. Following the surrender of Japan, while his fellow POWs were repatriated, van der Post chose to remain in Java, and on 15 September 1945, he joined Admiral Wilfrid Patterson on HMS "Cumberland" for the official surrender of the Japanese in Java to British forces representing the Allies. Van der Post then spent two years helping to mediate between Indonesian nationalists and members of the Dutch Colonial Government. He had gained trust
Laurens van der Post the remote Kalahari Desert for cattle ranching. There van der Post for the first time met the hunter-gatherer bush people known as Bushmen or San. He repeated the journey to the Kalahari in 1952. In 1953 he published his third book, "The Face Beside the Fire", a semi-autobiographical novel about a psychologically "lost" artist in search of his soul and soul-mate, which clearly shows Jung's influence on his thinking and writing. "Flamingo Feather" (1955) was an anti-communist novel in the guise of a Buchanesque adventure story, about a Soviet plot to take over South Africa. It sold very well. Alfred