This quote accurately captures the themes of the book. When everything is lost to oblivion, what remains is memory - but memory is never free of prejudice.

Our brains work in mysterious ways: while some dwell on the trauma of their past, others transform their pain into purpose, rewriting their own narratives. And then there are those who live in blissful ignorance-like the tormentor of the author's father, who does not remember his brutal acts.

"Who loves more?" Chekhov asks - a question that opens the door to emotional reckoning beyond numbers and headlines. In an age where history is simplified into statistics, we risk losing sight of the human cost. The first USAAF airstrike on German-occupied Europe missed its target, killing 52 civilians. It was still deemed a success. 

When lives become collateral, we cannot see the ripples that follow into the lives of the tormented.

Freeman, the man who dropped the atomic bomb, was asked how it made him feel. But no one asked him about those 52 civilians. Or the devastation he caused in Vietnam, which was more horrific then Hiroshima. Or of Tokyo, where more people died from convenitional bombing than those who died from atom bomb. What we choose to focus on - and what we choose to forget - shapes the narrative of history.

We all experience moments of epiphany - flashes of true awakening - but they are fleeting. Human nature's tendency to forget and to ignore is the "why" of Kafka's Harrow: a machine of relentless punishment, where suffering was staged as spectators stood by and watched. This moral indifference is the force bebind every genocide and brutality.

When we speak of World War II, we speak of Hiroshima. But we rarely speak of the atrocities committed by the Japanese, or the brutal conditions of the Death Railway, where the author's father was held as a prisoner of war. We do not speak of the genocide of the Tasmanian people by British colonizers - history that has faded and what remains is just scars and memories.

And here lies the central dilemma the book quietly wrestles with: How can we acknowledge the suffering of the Death Railway without also acknowledging Tokyo and Hiroshima? And how can we confront the devastation of Hiroshima without also remembering the cruelty of the Death Railway? The moment we give weight to one trauma, we risk diminishing another - yet silence, too, is a kind of violence. This book walks that tightrope with care, refusing to look away from either side.

This book maps the invisible threads that connect personal grief to global events. It begins with a kiss between H.G. Wells and Rebecca — an act that, improbably, leads to the birth of an idea. The atomic bomb began not in a laboratory, but in a novel. And had America not dropped that bomb, the author's father may have died as POW. But this book is not an argument for Hiroshima. It is a cry against war itself. 

The genocide of the Tasmanians happened. It is happening. It will happen again. History repeats; only the names of the victims and their tormentors change — Tasmanians, Jews, Palestinians. However, the inevitability doesn’t make the questions less relevant. 

Who loves more?
Who remembers?  
And who decides what is worth remembering?

This book isn't just a story; it's a moral awakening. It is eye-opening and fascinating. It's the most beautifully written nonfiction you will ever read- one that everyone should experience.

However, I too am bound by human nature. The impact it had on me was profound, yet I can already feel it fading away.

How do we sustain empathy-hold on to it not just in moments of revelation, but in the quiet, ordinary hours that follow? That is the question I'll be asking myself for a long time.