Empire of the Sun - Softcover

Ballard, J G

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743265238 ISBN 13: 9780743265232

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2005

Synopsis

The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China.

Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him.

Shanghai, 1941--a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.

Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.

About this title

Review:

"An outstanding novel...a classic adventure story."
-- The New York Times

"A profound and moving work of the imagination."
-- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"An incredible literary achievement....Brilliant."
-- Anthony Burgess

From the Back Cover:

“May well be that great British novel about the last war for which we’ve had to wait forty-odd years. Significantly enough, there are no heroics – scarcely any combatants, in fact. Only a British schoolboy lost in Shanghai when the Japanese invade, a vast company of the doomed, Shanghai itself and, in the background, history working itself out. 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

“An extraordinary addition to our modern literature of war. Indeed, if there is still room for a masterpiece about the Second World War, then this is it.”
ROBERT NYE, 'Guardian'

“Explores a world light-years away from that of conventional war fiction.”
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

“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

Winner of the 'Guardian' fiction prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743265238
• ISBN 13: 9780743265232
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288