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 Hitchcock planned to film the book, but lost support from South African authorities and gave up the idea. Penguin Books kept "Flamingo Feather" in print until the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1955 the BBC commissioned van der Post to return to the Kalahari in search of the Bushmen, a journey that turned into a six-part television documentary series in 1956. In 1958 his best known book was published under the same title as the BBC series: "The Lost World of the Kalahari". He followed this in 1961 by "The Heart of the Hunter", derived from "Specimens of Bushman