Empire of the Sun

About the Book

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.

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Empire of the Sun

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About the author

J. G. Ballard

James Graham Ballard (1930–2009) was a British novelist and short story writer who was a prominent part of the New Wave in science fiction in the mid- to late-1960s and whose work frequently focused on dystopian themes. J. G. Ballard's best known books are the controversial novel Crash, an exploration of sexual…

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