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Title: Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard ISBN: 1-56849-663-X Publisher: Buccaneer Books Inc Pub. Date: 01 December, 1987 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Intriguing account of boy's life amidst war and devastation
Comment: Empire of the Sun, by J.G. Ballard, is the poignant, unsettling story of Jim, a British boy living in Shanghai whose life is altered beyond recognition by the Japanese invasion of China during World War II. The book begins in the winter of 1941, as Jim, a carefree eleven-year-old, and his wealthy parents attend high-class Christmas parties with other foreigners who have prospered in Shanghai. The only life that the inventive, intelligent boy knows is one of luxury and privilege, hardly touched by the war in Europe. Everything changes after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Suddenly the Japanese soldiers that have long been a fixture on the Shanghai streets are forcefully, uncompromisingly rounding up foreigners and sending them to military prisons. Separated from his parents, Jim wanders through Shanghai until he "surrenders" to the Japanese and finds himself in a squalid, disease-ridden detainment center and eventually in Lunghua camp, his home for the next three years.
The book is based on the author's experiences in a Chinese interment camp from 1942 until 1945. Ballard has an incredible talent for articulating Jim's perspective and describing how the protagonist changes from an adventurous boy in a school uniform to an emaciated, resilient, thoughtful (and still adventurous) young man who desperately tries to make sense of the world. In Empire of the Sun, Ballard pointedly recounts the squalor, disease and starvation of the camp just as Jim sees them. While Jim quickly becomes immune to the sight of such things - along with constant the death, murder, and beatings - the reader remains deeply affected. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects is how Jim comes to rely on the camp because there he can build his own little universe amidst the absurdity of the world. Empire of the Sun is an arresting, shocking, frequently comical book that won't leave the reader unchanged.
Rating: 5
Summary: Not what you expect
Comment: This is an account of JG Ballard's childhood in Shanghai during World War II when he was imprisoned in an internment camp away from his parents but just knowing that alone tells you nothing about the book. Yes, it takes place in WWII but that's almost irrelevant to the book, Jim is barely aware of the war as far as most people would conceive it and the entire war seems to take place mostly on the periphery . . . if it doesn't affect him directly than he doesn't care. On one level this is a nicely detailed account of life in Shanghai, especially in the beginning. Ballard is a good enough writer that he can describe such mundane events with enough flair that they take on another ambiance entirely. This becomes more pronounced as Jim winds deeper into the war itself, with the book becoming almost dream like in its quality. A lot of people I think object to the actions of Jim, which are very much what we don't expect. He's fairly self centered and makes a lot of weird rationalizations but I had no trouble understanding his POV, even if I didn't totally agree with it. He's a kid caught in something he can barely understand, so he has to break it down into something he can understand and sometimes that means making it a game and sometimes that means doing some things that most of us would interpret as cruel. That was the most interesting part of the novel for me, watching Jim trying to cope with the events around him, deal with the fact that he can barely remember his parents, with the fact that the only life he can really remember after a while are in the camp itself. With everything filtered through his perceptions the reader has to evaluate for him or herself what exactly the truth is . . . Jim's perception of some characters can change over and over, or maybe not even agree with what the character is doing, but that's because he's looking at it through the eyes of a child and by way of Jim, so is the reader as well. The white flash of the atom bomb that comes toward the end isn't even a climax, it's just another strange event in a war where everything strange is normal and for Jim it doesn't even signify the end of the war, for him the war never really seems to end. Haunting in its grim depiction of reality, this stands as one of the better books to come out about WWII simply for its personal perspective.
Rating: 5
Summary: Horrifying
Comment: It can only be described as miraculous that Ballard survived what he wrote about in this thinly-disguised autobiography. At least twice he nearly starved to death. One of the ways he did survive
was to detach himself from all of the horrors he witnessed--disease, starvation, murder, executions. And he was all of 11 years old. Yet, watching an interview with Ballard on TV once, he said, for all of what he went through, he rather still enjoyed himself, saying that he thrived on change. This book is simply amazing. It is relentingly horrifying, though.
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Title:Empire of the Sun ASIN: B00003CX9U Publisher: Warner Home Video Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $16.38 |
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Title: The Kindness of Women by J. G. Ballard ISBN: 0156471140 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 April, 1993 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Cocaine Nights by J. G. Ballard ISBN: 1582430179 Publisher: Counterpoint Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Crash : A Novel by J. G. Ballard ISBN: 0312420331 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 05 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard by J. G. Ballard ISBN: 0312278446 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 06 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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