Description
Book SynopsisThe 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.
Trade Review‘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
