Rating:  Summary: About loneliness and death¿ Review: A beautiful and terrible book, Empire of the Sun has become one of mine preferred. After the attack to Pearl Harbour, the Japanese invaded South-Est Asia. Thousands of European civilians, women and children, couldn't escape and were interned by Japanese. A lot of them died from disease and starvation. James Ballard, the author, was one of those children. Living in Shanghai with his family, eleven years old, he was interned till the end of the war in the Lunghua camp. Jim, the protagonist of the novel, is the 'alter ego' of the writer, so the story is quite autobiographic. Shanghai is seized by Japanese and in an apocalyptic try to escape, Jim, born in a rich British family, become separated from his parents and must fight alone to survive. He will be soon prisoner of Japanese and will be interned till the end of the war, spending the years from childhood to adolescence in the internment camp. The war, that overwhelms everything and everybody, is reported from the point of view of the boy in a raw and shocking way, nothing is saved from the corruption caused by war. Shanghai is a hell's city, where thousands Chinese people lead a life without hope, oppressed first by Europeans and then by Japanese. Jim spends a life of absolute loneliness, not able to have a true relationship with other people. Obsessed by the primordial necessity of food, he become a 'disgusting boy' ready to do everything to survive, even to steal the food from other European prisoners, or to become the slave of a small criminal without scruples. Jim looks with a corrosive eye and black umor at the life of the European prisoners. With their body destroyed by disease and starvation, they loose any hope and lead a life made of baseness and small egoism. Leave alone to cope with the ruin of his life, Jim will find a refuge in a world of dreams, populated by the myth of Japanese aviators. Jim feels himself close to the Japanese kamikazes for their bravery, but especially for their loneliness and sadness. His dreams will allow him to survive till the end of the war. At the end the only life that he knows will be the life in the camp, and when this will end also his world of dreams will collapse marking the end of his childhood. By now an adolescent without any hope, Jim will wander an apocalyptic landscape, almost crazy from starvation, welcoming the death as liberation, but he will survive. The death is an obsessive presence in every page of the book, bodies, devastated by flies, are every where and the air is saturated by smell of decomposition. In my opinion this story is one of the most important documents about the atrocity of wars in the twentieth century. For its strong and shocking message against the war this is a book without time and I think that will be read also by future generations.
Rating:  Summary: It was hard to tell where the "real" ended. . . Review: and the surreal began. Childhood must be a form of madness if Ballard is recording it without error. I never want to go there! Do read this fine, fine book.
Rating:  Summary: The most special of war novels Review: As I was reading the book, I thought to myself not "Oh, yes, WW II is horrible and cruel" but more along the lines of "This is a familiar childhood but the war made it even more special, more exciting." I would say the war itself is in a comfortable distance, beyond the prison camp and it is Jamie's transformation that is in the foreground. The book is absolutely brilliant and I thank J.G.Ballard for it.
Rating:  Summary: description comparing book to movie and genre books Review: Ballard's explicit "Empire of the Sun" exceeds the movie's depiction of Japanese WWII Civilian Assembly Center hardships. Good though Spielberg may be with other subjects, beyond promoting this important out-of-print book, he does not support Ballard's graphic sense of realism. Ballard, not the movie, describes prison camp conditions like no Hollywood effort can hope to recreate. Compare "Empire of the Sun" to Agnes Newton Keith's "Three Came Home" (1947) and, from the POW point of view, James Clavell's "King Rat".
Rating:  Summary: Why does some wierd guy in Shepperton speak Japanese??? Review: Because he grew up as a war orphan in a Japanese internment camp in China. This is one of Ballard's greatest and wierdest, probably because it's true. He powerfully describes scenes down to details that make you feel like you're there with him as a child. The pattern of smeared face powder on his mother's abandoned boudoire, the wind as it blows across the grass as he and the camp commander's son share silent communion. You didn't like Crash? Fine. This is a different world. Read it.
Rating:  Summary: Intriguing account of boy's life amidst war and devastation Review: 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:  Summary: Has its moments--but also its flaws. Review: Everyone else seems to love this book so much that they either didn't notice, or chose not to mention, its significant flaws. Yes, the details are graphic and accurate, and yes, you feel like you are there, and yes, the prose has its occasional shining moments. However, through probably the first 3/4 of the book, the protagonist Jim is nearly a completely unsympathetic character. He has little, if any, feeling for anyone other than himself. His parents and friends are distant, shallowly sketched characters who never truly come alive. His sole concern is for his own welfare. He observes many of the brutal events in the book with an appalling lack of concern. (And don't tell me that this can be excused because he's "only a child". Some children are more affectionate and caring than others, but of the many I've met--even the ones who have been neglected or abused--few are such cold fish as Jim). In fact, he effortlessly falls into the role of a hyena-like scavenger among his fellow prisoners, waiting and wishing for each one to die and then robbing their corpses of whatever he can. In one particularly repulsive sequence, he takes food rightfully belonging to a dying British soldier without making any effort to help him, and watches impartially as the soldier dies. He rationalizes this as being "survival of the fittest" and that helping other people would only mean his own death, but his excuses ring hollow to this reader's ear. He ingratiates himself as much as he can with the Japanese, and befriends a manipulative con man who uses him as a servant and a source of profit. While he bemoans the attitude of the British in the camps, and views the suffering Chinese outside the camp as less than human, he never turns a critical eye on the people who hurt and use him; instead he likes and respects them. I found that rather sickening. Toward the end of the book he does display some sort of feeling of responsibility, but compared with his behavior throughout most of the book, it's too little, too late, to gain my sympathy. Also, the author's interruptions in the story, and his frequent contradictions, make it confusing to read at times. In one scene, Jim is so sick from hunger that he can barely stand without being dizzy; a few seconds later he's running and jumping over fences (and it's the same scene). Another example: he often says he dislikes Dr. Ransome, though he never really explains why (except that the doctor reminds him of a rugby master), and then he suddenly expresses feelings of concern for the doctor's fate that seem all out of character. If some crisis sparked a change of heart in Jim, it hasn't been articulated well enough for the reader to recognize. And the doctor is portrayed as someone who pretends to care about his patients but, Jim suspects, is devious and more concerned with himself than he lets on. Jim continues to believe this, despite very little evidence to prove it (the doctor drank more water than he should have in one scene; he hoarded potatoes from dead patients in another. Yet, he tirelessly works to improve the lot of all the sick people in the camp all through the book, and he feeds Jim on many occasions.) There is no revelation of the doctor's character as being false, yet Jim clings to his theory until the end of the book, where he suddenly changes his mind with no reason whatsoever. Such contradictions lie throughout the book, clouding characterization. Also, fans of gore would disagree with me, but there were so many scenes of death and bloodshed in the book that I became tired of reading long gruesome descriptions which seemed included merely to be long and gruesome and say, "Isn't war awful?" As if we don't know it is already. Keeping it down to the minimum necessary to advance the plot would have made the book more effective. Pages and pages of horrible deaths merely harden the reader (I found myself skipping pages just to get on with the rest of the story). Whereas a few well-chosen violent scenes would have been all that was necessary to evoke the chaotic world of wartime China. I compare this narrative to Nevil Shute's fictional "A Town Like Alice", where the Japanese violence was only demonstrated a few times, yet the overtones of fear were palpable throughout the entire part of the narrative that was set during the war. So, while I agree that this book has its occasional fine moments, as other reviewers have already pointed out, because of excessive gore, uneven storytelling and the lack of a sympathetic main character, it doesn't quite reach the level of greatness. I give it three stars for its sometimes poetic moments.
Rating:  Summary: Has its moments--but also its flaws. Review: Everyone else seems to love this book so much that they either didn't notice, or chose not to mention, its significant flaws. Yes, the details are graphic and accurate, and yes, you feel like you are there, and yes, the prose has its occasional shining moments. However, through probably the first 3/4 of the book, the protagonist Jim is nearly a completely unsympathetic character. He has little, if any, feeling for anyone other than himself. His parents and friends are distant, shallowly sketched characters who never truly come alive. His sole concern is for his own welfare. He observes many of the brutal events in the book with an appalling lack of concern. (And don't tell me that this can be excused because he's "only a child". Some children are more affectionate and caring than others, but of the many I've met--even the ones who have been neglected or abused--few are such cold fish as Jim). In fact, he effortlessly falls into the role of a hyena-like scavenger among his fellow prisoners, waiting and wishing for each one to die and then robbing their corpses of whatever he can. In one particularly repulsive sequence, he takes food rightfully belonging to a dying British soldier without making any effort to help him, and watches impartially as the soldier dies. He rationalizes this as being "survival of the fittest" and that helping other people would only mean his own death, but his excuses ring hollow to this reader's ear. He ingratiates himself as much as he can with the Japanese, and befriends a manipulative con man who uses him as a servant and a source of profit. While he bemoans the attitude of the British in the camps, and views the suffering Chinese outside the camp as less than human, he never turns a critical eye on the people who hurt and use him; instead he likes and respects them. I found that rather sickening. Toward the end of the book he does display some sort of feeling of responsibility, but compared with his behavior throughout most of the book, it's too little, too late, to gain my sympathy. Also, the author's interruptions in the story, and his frequent contradictions, make it confusing to read at times. In one scene, Jim is so sick from hunger that he can barely stand without being dizzy; a few seconds later he's running and jumping over fences (and it's the same scene). Another example: he often says he dislikes Dr. Ransome, though he never really explains why (except that the doctor reminds him of a rugby master), and then he suddenly expresses feelings of concern for the doctor's fate that seem all out of character. If some crisis sparked a change of heart in Jim, it hasn't been articulated well enough for the reader to recognize. And the doctor is portrayed as someone who pretends to care about his patients but, Jim suspects, is devious and more concerned with himself than he lets on. Jim continues to believe this, despite very little evidence to prove it (the doctor drank more water than he should have in one scene; he hoarded potatoes from dead patients in another. Yet, he tirelessly works to improve the lot of all the sick people in the camp all through the book, and he feeds Jim on many occasions.) There is no revelation of the doctor's character as being false, yet Jim clings to his theory until the end of the book, where he suddenly changes his mind with no reason whatsoever. Such contradictions lie throughout the book, clouding characterization. Also, fans of gore would disagree with me, but there were so many scenes of death and bloodshed in the book that I became tired of reading long gruesome descriptions which seemed included merely to be long and gruesome and say, "Isn't war awful?" As if we don't know it is already. Keeping it down to the minimum necessary to advance the plot would have made the book more effective. Pages and pages of horrible deaths merely harden the reader (I found myself skipping pages just to get on with the rest of the story). Whereas a few well-chosen violent scenes would have been all that was necessary to evoke the chaotic world of wartime China. I compare this narrative to Nevil Shute's fictional "A Town Like Alice", where the Japanese violence was only demonstrated a few times, yet the overtones of fear were palpable throughout the entire part of the narrative that was set during the war. So, while I agree that this book has its occasional fine moments, as other reviewers have already pointed out, because of excessive gore, uneven storytelling and the lack of a sympathetic main character, it doesn't quite reach the level of greatness. I give it three stars for its sometimes poetic moments.
Rating:  Summary: Ballard at his outstanding best Review: If the 20th century will be remembered chiefly for its wars, technology, and loss of innocence, then "Empire of the Sun" should be one of its most emblematic novels. Forget the Spielberg movie (good as it was) -- this harsh but beautiful story shows Ballard's dreamscape at its hallucinatory best. The young protagonist, in love with aviation but imprisoned in a surreal wartime China, is sympathetic and identifiable but oddly apart. The book's images stick in the mind, and largely colored my impressions of China during a first visit ten years after reading the novel. A magnificent work.
Rating:  Summary: Horrifying Review: 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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