Empire of the Sun
J G Ballard author John Lanchester editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers
Published:20th Feb '06
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£9.99(9780008555368)
Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
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.
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.
‘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
‘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
‘A brilliant fusion of history, autobiography and imaginative speculation. An incredible literary achievement and almost intolerably moving’ Anthony Burgess
ISBN: 9780007221523
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 21mm
Weight: 240g
352 pages