Empire of the Sun: J.G. Ballard (4th Estate Matchbook Classics) - Softcover

Ballard, J. G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0008329753 ISBN 13: 9780008329754

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2019

Synopsis

The classic, heartrending story of a British boy’s four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp.

One of the ten books – novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography – that make up our Matchbook Classics’ series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist.

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.

About this title

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

‘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

About the Author:

J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai. After internment in a civilian prison camp, his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller ‘Empire of the Sun’ won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His controversial novel ‘Crash’ was made into a film by David Cronenberg. His autobiography ‘Miracles of Life’ was published in 2008, and a collection of interviews with the author, ‘Extreme Metaphors’, was published in 2012. J. G. Ballard passed away in 2009.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0008329753
• ISBN 13: 9780008329754
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352