num_pages: 351
description: The classic, heartrending story of a British boy’s four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Newly reissued with an introduction by John Lanchester.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 our time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the twentieth century will be not only remembered but judged.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Zadie Smith, Rivka Galchen, Hari Kunzru and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.
language: English
title: Empire of the Sun
titlecomplete: Empire of the Sun
characters: Dr. Ransome, Mary Graham, John Graham, Jamie Graham
genres: Fiction, Japan, China, Classics, World War II, Historical, War, Asia, Historical Fiction, Novels
ratings_count: 20073
places: China, Shanghai
series: Empire of the Sun
awards: awardedAt: 441792000000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 441792000000
name: Guardian Fiction Award, awardedAt: 441792000000
name: James Tait Black Memorial Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 473414400000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Fiction
publisher: Harper Perennial