The Seed and the Sower opposed codes of honour. The final segment is Lawrence’s reminiscence of a brief affair with a woman whose name he never learned, shortly before his capture by the Japanese. 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
John Laurens Laurens commanded an infantry regiment in General Benjamin Lincoln's failed assault on Savannah, Georgia. Laurens was taken prisoner by the British in May 1780, after the fall of Charleston. As a prisoner of war, he was shipped to Philadelphia, where he was paroled with the condition that he would not leave Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia, Laurens was able to visit his father, who would soon take ship for the Netherlands as American ambassador, in search of loans. During the voyage to his post, Henry Laurens' ship was seized by the British, resulting in the elder Laurens' imprisonment in the Tower of