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.
ISBN: | 9780007221523 |
Publication date: | 28th August 2014 |
Author: | J. G. Ballard, John Lanchester |
Publisher: | Fourth Estate Ltd an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers |
Format: | Paperback |
Pagination: | 352 pages |
Genres: |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction Historical Fiction Second World War fiction Classics Narrative theme: displacement, exile, migration |