The heartrending story of a British boy's four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World 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 ...
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The heartrending story of a British boy's four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World 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.
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Add this copy of Empire of the Sun (the Perennial Collection) to cart. $4.60, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Harper Perennial.
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Add this copy of Empire of the Sun (the Perennial Collection) to cart. $16.34, very good condition, Sold by Halcyon Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from LONDON, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2008 by HarperPerennial.
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This is a much more in-depth rendering of his experience than the movie. It's a good read although it bogged down in the middle. Recommended.
Shortfeather
Dec 3, 2009
Empire of the Sun
The book is realistic, written in the second person, and very frank without being either overly grahpic or morbid, when describing the misery and death endured as a prisoner of the Japanese in China, during WWII. There is hardly any likeness between the book and the movie. The book is reality, the movie is, at best, loosely based upon the book. The book can get almost mundane, whereas the movie is idealistic and action packed for the feel-good appeal. For someone who has traveled to or lived in the Far East, the book makes it easy to visualize the sights, smells, the flora and fauna, and the living conditions the author knew as a young boy turned teen-ager living and surviving in pre-war and WWII China.
A worthwhile book to add to your library.