Empire of the sun

Name: Empire of the sun
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780007268405

by Unknown Author

351 pages2008Harper PerennialISBN 9780007268405

Fiction

Open in BookOwl Download on App Store

About this book

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.

Publication Details

Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2008
Pages: 351
ISBN: 9780007268405
Language: en

About Unknown Author

James Graham Ballard was born and raised in the International Settlement in Shanghai, China to a chemist. In 1943 the Japanese occupied the International Settlement and Ballard's family was sent to the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center, where they were interned for two years until the end of World War II. In 1946, Ballard went to England with his mother and sister, and stayed on in England after his mother and sister returned to China to rejoin his father. In 1949 he went to King's College, Cambridge to study medicine, but he began writing fiction and abandoned medicine in 1952 to pursue writing. In 1953 he joined the Air Force and was sent to the Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to train. There he discovered science fiction in and he began to write science fiction. He left the RAF in 1954 and returned to England. In 1956 he published his science fiction story. In 1960 he committed to writing full-time.