Empire of the Sun
On Sale: 09/03/2024
Empire of the Sun
On Sale: 09/03/2024
Format:
About the Book
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.
Critical Praise
‘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
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Product Details
- ISBN: 9780007221523
- ISBN 10: 0007221525
- Imprint: Fourth Estate
- On Sale: 09/03/2024
- Pages: 352
- List Price:18.99 CAD
- BISAC1 : FICTION / War & Military
- BISAC2 : FICTION / Legal
- BISAC3 : FICTION / Historical
- BISAC4 : FICTION / Literary
- BISAC5 : FICTION / Biographical
