Authors: J. G. Ballard

Tags: #World War; 1939-1945 - China - Shanghai, #War Stories, #World War; 1939-1945, #Shanghai, #Bildungsromans, #Shanghai (China), #Fiction, #Romance, #Boys, #China, #Historical, #War & Military, #General, #Media Tie-In

Empire of the Sun (44 page)

BOOK: Empire of the Sun

10.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads

The argument that atomic weapons, by virtue of the genetic damage they cause to the future generations, belong to a special category of evil, seems to me to be equally misguided. The genetic consequences of a rifle bullet through the heart are even more catastrophic, for the victim’s genes go nowhere except the grave and his descendants are not even born.

In 1992, nearly fifty years after entering Lunghua camp, I returned for the first time. To my surprise, everything was as I remembered it, though the barrack huts had gone, and the former camp was now a Chinese high school. The children were on holiday, and I was able to visit my old room. Standing between the bunks, I knew that this was where I had been happiest and most at home, despite being a prisoner living under the threat of an early death.

But to survive war, especially as a civilian, one needs to accept the rules it imposes and even, as I did, learn to welcome it.

This article first appeared in the Sunday Times in 1995.

Read on

Have You Read?

Other titles by J.G. Ballard

The Kindness of Women

This second autobiographical work from Ballard continues where
Empire of the Sun
left off. Tracing Jim’s life as he moves from Shanghai to England, and from adolescence to middle age, it is an unsparingly honest account of suburban bliss, domestic tragedy and sexual experimentation.

The Drowned World

In Ballard’s first full novel, inspired in part by his memories of Shanghai, London is a city inundated by a primeval swamp.

The Drought

Water. Man’s most precious commodity is a luxury of the past in this compelling early novel from Ballard. Radioactive waste from years of industrial dumping has caused the sea to form a protective skin strong enough to devastate the earth it once sustained. And while the remorseless sun beats down on Dr Charles Ransom and the remaining inhabitants of Mount Royal, civilization begins to crack…

Collected Short Stories

Ballard’s very first stories, ‘Prima Belladonna’ and ‘Escapement’, were published in
Science Fantasy
and
New Worlds
back in 1956. This volume offers an unparalleled chance to explore his complete shorter oeuvre and marvel at both his development as a writer and his mastery of the form.

Crash

Ballard’s controversial cult novel, subsequently made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg, was originally published in 1973 but it has lost none of its potency. Vaughan, a TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the highways, craves the ultimate erotic atrocity: a union of blood, semen and engine fluid in a head-on smash with Elizabeth Taylor.

High Rise

Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on ‘enemy’ floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for mayhem. In Ballard’s visionary novel, human society slips into violent reverse as the inhabitants of the high rise, driven by primal urges, recreate a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.

Millennium People

While searching for the truth behind the Heathrow bomb that killed his ex-wife, psychologist David Markham infiltrates a shadowy protest group based in the comfortable enclave of Chelsea Marina. He finds that these middle-class revolutionaries are intent on destroying everything they’ve worked so hard for: blowing up the National Film Theatre, no less, burning their books, defaulting on their maintenance charges and staging a great Bonfire of the Volvos. Part cultural analysis and part surreal social prediction, this gripping late novel finds Ballard still at the height of his creative powers.

If You Loved This, You Might Like…

The Singapore Grip

J.G. Farrell

The Railway Man

Eric Lomax

Wild Swans

Jung Chang

Bridge on the River Kwai

Pierre Boulle

The Cement Garden

Ian McEwan

Heaven’s Edge

Romesh Gunesekera

Lord of the Flies

William Golding

Find Out More

WATCH

Empire of the Sun

With a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, and starring a young Christian Bale as Jim, Steven Spielberg’s 1987 adaptation has the grace and grandeur of a David Lean epic and, perhaps more importantly, the author’s wholehearted seal of approval.

The Sun

Described by Ballard himself as resembling ‘a dream-like newsreel filmed by a secret camera deep in the emperor’s bunker’ and as a film that ‘brilliantly sums up all the dilemmas that surround war and peace’ Alexander Sokurov’s film offers a remarkable portrait of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito and compellingly details the closing events of the war in Asia.

SURF

www.jgballard.com

About the Author

J.G. B
ALLARD
was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China, where his father was a businessman. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ballard and his family were placed in a civilian prison camp. They returned to England in 1946. After two years at Cambridge, where he read medicine, Ballard worked as a copywriter and Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF. He started writing short stories in the late 1950s, while working on a scientific journal. His first major novel,
The Drowned World,
was published in 1962. His acclaimed novels include
The Crystal World, The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash
(filmed by David Cronenberg),
High-Rise, The Unlimited Dream Company, The Kindness of Women
(the sequel to
Empire of the Sun), Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes
and, most recently,
Millennium People.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.co.uk for exclusive information on your favourite HarperCollins authors.

By the same author

The Drowned World

The Voices of Time

The Terminal Beach

The Drought

The Crystal World

The Day of Forever

The Venus Hunters

The Disaster Area

The Atrocity Exhibition

Vermilion Sands

Crash

Concrete Island

High-Rise

Low-Flying Aircraft

The Unlimited Dream Company

Hello America

Myths of the Near Future

Empire of the Sun

The Day of Creation

Running Wild

War Fever

The Kindness of Women

Rushing to Paradise

A User’s Guide to the Millennium
(non-fiction)

Cocaine Nights

Super-Cannes

The Complete Short Stories

Millennium People

Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith
London W6 8JB

www.harperperennial.co.uk

This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006

EIGHTH EDITION

Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1994

First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz Ltd 1984

‘The End of My War’ by J.G. Ballard © J.G. Ballard 1995

PS
^™is a trademark of HarperCollins
Publishers
Ltd

J.G. Ballard asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-28313-2

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.