| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Harper Perennial Modern Classics - Empire of the Sun for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
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
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 our time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the twentieth century will be not only remembered but judged.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although everything I have read by Ballard is excellent, I would recommend this book as a starting point. The author weaves autobiography with fiction in a compelling way; in some places the novel hints at the dream-like sequences that he has deployed in other works, but the story is firmly grounded in reality. The most apparent theme is that of survival, but I don't think Ballard wrote this with any kind of agenda; perhaps that's what's so refreshing about it.
One of his greatest talents as a writer is finding moments of beauty in what, for lesser writers, would be mires of ugliness. Ballard's voice is thoroughly modern throughout, despite the book's retrospective narrative: you can instantly tell this is the author of 'The Concrete Island' or 'High Rise', despite how remote those novels are from the second world war.
Those who have seen Spielberg's film will be thoroughly shocked: there is little sentimentality here, and the story is quite different in its later stages. Not that the film is a poor adaptation - rather, it's a seperate entity. Always read the book first!
It's wonderful that an author can use his past as a starting point for fiction, rather than being either grounded in it or evading it. It's hard to tell what is fact from what isn't, and surely that's a good thing.
Finally, I must stress that this is a book which not only survives several repeated reads but seems to require it.
One of his greatest talents as a writer is finding moments of beauty in what, for lesser writers, would be mires of ugliness. Ballard's voice is thoroughly modern throughout, despite the book's retrospective narrative: you can instantly tell this is the author of 'The Concrete Island' or 'High Rise', despite how remote those novels are from the second world war.
Those who have seen Spielberg's film will be thoroughly shocked: there is little sentimentality here, and the story is quite different in its later stages. Not that the film is a poor adaptation - rather, it's a seperate entity. Always read the book first!
It's wonderful that an author can use his past as a starting point for fiction, rather than being either grounded in it or evading it. It's hard to tell what is fact from what isn't, and surely that's a good thing.
Finally, I must stress that this is a book which not only survives several repeated reads but seems to require it.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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 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.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Empire was a gret book to read. As an 18 year old doing his HSC in Australia, i found it complex in both the area of the themes as well as the plot and setting. Ballard, who obviously has an experience in this area, but does not claim this to be an autobiography, has captured the audience from the first chapter to the last. Empire is well worth the buy. The only negative about the book that I came across was the monotony of the scenes in places, other than that, excellent!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
In my humble opinion
At last I have finished " Empire of the sun " Ballards depressing and surreal account of his war years in captivity . Read more
Published 1 month ago by M Marlow
Heart of darkness
The quote on the back of this book from a review by Anthony Burgess is true - that it is 'almost intolerably moving'. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Scarficus
Tennis Racquets, Rickshaws, Zeros, Mustangs and B29s
The blinding light from the atomic bombs dropped on Japan... A group of colonial prisoners from a Japanese interment camp on a death march carrying suitcases, tennis racquets and... Read more
Published 3 months ago by silvercycler
This book was slow and badly organised.
I read 3/4 of this book and then I finally gave up. I have read many books and in none of them did I get lost like I did in this. Read more
Published 4 months ago by this is...
IMHO, excellent book.
Excuse the absurd comparison, but is like watching Dexter: the hero does bad things, but you feel it's not his fault, and you want everything to go better for him. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Gia
All the hype is justified....
This isn't just one of the best books about the Japanese occupation of China, it's one of the greatest works on the second world war and deserves all the praise and hype that's... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Dr. Regis Phillpot
cd Empire of the sun
Very good reading of this book but sadly over-abridged, I purchased it as a gcse revision toool for my daighter and we did enjoy listening to it in the car, however large chunks... Read more
Published on 21 May 2010 by J DAWSON
Empire on the run
Everything I've read by Ballard is brilliant. You can't go wrong:
Shanghai Docks - a chaos of junks, sampans, and iron warships. Read more
Shanghai Docks - a chaos of junks, sampans, and iron warships. Read more
Published on 7 May 2010 by Mr. N. Foale
Did I miss something?
I'd read a lot of enthusiastic references to J. G. Ballard and his tales of distopia, and was disappointed to find that this, my first J. G. Read more
Published on 17 Mar 2010 by Katherine McGrail
Buy it for the nearest teenager - open their minds
Of course I didn't just mean teenagers.
This is an important book in the true sense of the phrase - the sort that will puncture the hard heart of all budding hoodies... Read more
This is an important book in the true sense of the phrase - the sort that will puncture the hard heart of all budding hoodies... Read more
Published on 23 Feb 2010 by Taz
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
