Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79569 in Books
• Published on: 1994-09-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Synopsis
In this sequel to "Empire of the Sun", the author places the traumatic events described in that novel within the context of a lifetime. Jim, the narrator, returns to England after the war, and trains as a medical student at Cambridge, and as an RAF pilot in Canada.

Customer Reviews

Cheated!!
The reason that I have only given this book 2 stars, is that it tells the story, albeit in brief of The Empire of The Sun, which I feel is 4*. This book is billed as a sequel and I feel that to spend the first part of it re-telling the earlier book in a watered down version is very unfair to purchasers and readers of both books. I felt cheated.

Ballard at his Best
I have read most of what Ballard has written; and I can't understand why this novel is so neglected, compared to The Atrocity Exhibition or Crash. To me this is the best thing he has written in the long form. Some of his short stories may be a bit better; but this is an absolute masterpiece, and it's probably the book I'd first give a friend to allow him or her to discover the Ballard World. It's a complex and astounding mix of facts and fiction, of visionary imagination and down-to-earth realism. The parts about the death of the protagonist's wife, the end of the war, the making of the movie Empire of the Sun in Shepperton should be in anthologies of English literature. His prose is dazzling, and this is probably the only long book by ballard where we don't meet his stereotypical characters only, but a wide variety of persons. All in all, a must-read for those who think Ballard is only Empire of the Sun and Crash.

Great book
This is a great book, full of good ideas as well as the usual Ballard themes (emasculated accountants, TV cameras, acts of violence, cars and planes). It basically revolves around Jim's life after returning from China, focussing in particular on his relationships with women. I'm enjoying this much more than Empire of the Sun, which I found to be a bit tedious, more than High Rise, and almost as much as Super Cannes.