Empire Of The Sun

Empire Of The SunThe classic, heartrending story of a British boys four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on J. G. Ballards own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boys 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

The classic, 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 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 Adam Thirlwell, Hari Kunzru, James Lever and Ali Smith) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.