Product Description

The heartrending story of a British boy's four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on J. G. Ballard's own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai -- a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint. Rooted as it is in the author's own disturbing experience of war in own time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the twentieth century will be not only remembered but judged.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11679 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'An extraordinary achievement' Angela Carter 'A remarkable journey into the mind of a growing boy ! horror and humanity are blended into a unique and unforgettable fiction' Sunday Times 'An immensely powerful novel -- in a class of its own for sheer imaginative force' Daily Telegraph 'Remarkable ! form, content and style fuse with complete success ! one of the great war novels of the 20th century' William Boyd 'Gripping and remarkable ! I have never read a novel which gave me a stronger sense of the blind helplessness of war ! unforgettable' Observer 'Ranks with the greatest British writing on the Second World War' The Times 'A brilliant fusion of history, autobiography and imaginative speculation. An incredible literary achievement and almost intolerably moving' Anthony Burgess

About the Author
J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg. His controversial novel Crash was also made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg. His most recent novels include the Sunday Times bestsellers Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.

Customer Reviews

Master work
Empire of the Sun is one of JG Ballard's more accessible books which tells the story of a young boy, Jim, and his experiences in Shanghai during World War Two. How many of the events in the book are taken directly from his experience is not entirely clear but the fact that he is informed by first hand experience gives the book a chilling authenticity.

The book is written entirely from the boy's point of view; all events and situations are described in Jim's own words and grounded in his own experience. Ballard makes no attempt to interject any adult interpretations or provide a retrospective opinion and maintains the integrity of the style throughout. This is no mean feat and is a clear indication of Ballard's talent as a writer.

A magnificent work by one of the greatest living English speaking novelists.

the best book i have read in a very long time
This book is simply fantastic. I usually read fantasy but remembered the film as a child and then bought the book. I read the book then watched the fim again and i advise that you read the book first as the film no where near captures the true desolation, despair, euphoria, death,hunger, desperation, fear and love that the book invokes in vision and mind. This may be because the film was directed at a younger audience whereas the book i feel is directed toward adults both in its theme and style.

The book is set in second world war japan and tells the heart rending story of Jim who becomes separated from his well to do parents in shanghai in a crushing crowd of fleeing people in the midddle of the city after Japan attacks America at Pearl Harbour. In the ensuing chaos jim returns home and waits there for 4 days for his parents who he does not know have been taken as prisoners of war along with most other westerners.

After exhausting his food supply he goes in search of his parents nad for more food,even trying to surrender to the japanese, with no luck. He befreinds 2 US soldiers philandering on the waterfront whom Jim attached himself for survival in spite of their attempts to sell him to uninterested Japanese. What ensues could most possibly be the best writing of all time considering fiction which still never ceases to amaze me. Jim ends up in a PoW camp himself, and is made even more true by JG Ballards own real life experience in a Japanese PoW camp and Jim's survival instinct coupled with his innate childishness is makes for a truly remembering read.

Reissue of Ballard's classic semi-autobiographical novel
'Empire of the Sun' is a key novel in J.G. Ballard's vast oeuvre, a book that saw great critical acclaim; his greatest commercial success; shortlisting for the Booker Prize; winning both the Guardian Fiction Prize & the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; & a fine cinematic adaptation by Steven Spielberg/Tom Stoppard.It also came highly in a Top 100 voted by the public at Waterstones in 1999 - though obscenely it wasn't nominated in the BBC's Big Read a few years ago! The contemporary classic novel is republished by Harper Perennial Modern Classics with a great cover and the additional PS-section, which has been hit & miss in other Harper reissues such as 'Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail'72' & 'Naked Lunch.' Perhaps the publishers should issue a cheap book with these PS-elements and excerpts from the to-be-published novels instead? They seem a bit superflous here.

Published in 1984,'Empire of the Sun' drew on Ballard's experiences as a P.O.W. under Japanese occupation in World War II. The actual autobiographical experience was captured in a 1980s documentary Ballard made for the BBC and an article 'The End of My War' written for the Sunday Times in 1995 (the latter is collected in the excellent collection 'A User's Guide to the Millennium').Ballard's experience found him in a concentration camp with his family - who aren't here and a gruesomeness that the writer of 'The Atrocity Exhibition' opted to restrain from. Like the earlier 'Crash' whose lead-character took his name from the author, 'Empire of the Sun' has Jamie Ballard as its lead character - the writer Ballard chanelling the psychological experience as well as the autobiographical and the historical. Fans of Ballard's earlier science fiction works - 'The Drowned World', 'The Drought', the many short stories etc.- will see where the imagery of the tropical, the empty swimming pools and other key aspects of his work stem from. In many ways 'Empire of the Sun' personalises the imagery of his earlier works - while the extremes Ballard explored can be explained by the experiences here. Towards the end Jamie experiences the reaction of the atomic bomb dropped in Japan - something JG Ballard never experienced, but this is in line with the psychology of Ballard's works and elements of interest found in things like the story 'The Terminal Beach' (death, heat, madness, a bikini island atoll) & 'The Atrocity Exhibition'- which focused partly on the atom bomb. The sense of impending apocalypse, the embrace of entropy & the allure of death are all present in 'Empire of the Sun' as they are in the rest of Ballard's canon. He did not compromise to make a best-seller in anyway - though saying that, I think this is more than suitable reading for a teenager - which is probably not something I'd say about 'Crash' or 'High Rise'!

The evidence that Ballard did not compromise in anyway is demonstrated by the trademark chapter titles which have much in common with titles of short stories and chapters in prior works - 'The Drained Swimming Pool', 'The Open-Air Cinema', 'The Abandoned Aerodrome', 'The Cemetery Garden', 'The Empire of the Sun'...all could have featured in earlier works (...and some did - have a look at the LSD-inflected freeform experiment that was 'The Atrocity Exhibition'). The acrobat found in 'Concrete Island' is explained by the acrobat here, as the drained swimming pools or overloaded tropics of 'The Drowned World' (also reissued alongside this) are...

'Empire of the Sun' is a great novel, not only one of the key novels of the 1980s alongside 'Remains of the Day', 'The Cement Garden', 'Money', 'Earthly Powers', & 'The Wasp Factory' but one of the great novels. It's one of the books of Ballard's I come back to the most - having read it several times and likely several times more (this new reissue is very tempting). I'd say it is one of his key works alongside 'The Atrocity Exhibition', 'Crash', 'The Drowned World', 'High Rise', 'Super Cannes', 'The Terminal Beach', 'The Unlimited Dream Company' & 'The Voices of Time'.

'Empire of the Sun' is also a reminder, a report from the frontline of the experience of war and as such demands to be read in relation to that theme (it's suggested reading in Sebastian Faulks' recent collection of war fiction). It easily belongs alongside key novels concerning the experience of war - 'Catch 22', 'Slaughterhouse-5', 'The Gallery', 'The Naked & the Dead', 'All is Quiet on the Western Front', 'Journey to the End of the Night' & 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' I think it's one of those key texts that ought to be taught at GCSE-level - a great achievment and one that Ballard was clearly building to with his avant garde, extreme, and SF-inflected works.