by J. G. Ballard (Author), John Lanchester (Introduction), John Lanchester (Introduction), J. G. Ballard (Author)
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.
Format: paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published:
ISBN 10: 0007221525
ISBN 13: 9780007221523
`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
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.