My first introduction to this story was, like many others, through Steven Spielberg's adaptation. For me, the hauntingly beautiful "Suo Gan" that serves as that movie's de facto theme song perfectly captures the fragile yet enduring beauty of humanity that Spielberg so successfully captures in his movie version. The movie abounds with poignant moments of hope, warmth, and exhilaration amongst the great struggles that befall Jim and his band of acquaintances. I enjoyed the movie, and Jim's story and haunting memory of Suo Gan made a lasting impression.

Years later, I encountered the original story--J.G. Ballard's novel that served as Spielberg's inspiration. Just as the newsreels and magazines that tell of the war fascinate Jim in the book because they describe a war so different than the one he knows, so does Spielberg's movie tell a different tale from Ballard's book. The events are by and large the same, but the tone of the story, the horrors experienced by Jim, and the lessons and impressions instilled by the novel are on a different order of magnitude from the movie. I enjoyed the movie on its own merits, but I imagine the order in which you encounter them colors your impression--for people like me who saw the movie first, it was easy to appreciate the movie, and then be blown away by the power of the book. For those who read the book first, I would imagine the movie would be a disappointing, sanitized version of the original work.

The novel overpowers the reader from start to finish by Ballard's stark account of Jim's survival against all odds, in conditions stacked heavily against him. Death, betrayal, illness, and hunger surround Jim and yet somehow he always managed to survive because he never despairs, never gives up, always keeps his wits about him, and as he himself explains, because he "takes nothing for granted." The world of WWII Shanghai strips humanity to its bare, naked, ugly core. Growing up in this environment, Jim becomes a remarkably complex character in spite of (or perhaps because of) his young age. Jim is intelligent, naive, loyal, callous, hopeful, curious, delusional, and yet oddly lucid--all at the same time. The image of flight is strong throughout the story, as a form of escape, and in some ways the only vestige of childhood granted to this boy as he goes through a life full of cruel ironies--first, the inability despite repeated attempts to surrender to an enemy that he needs infinitely more than they need him; then, the odd realization that this "enemy" is his greatest protector and in many instances, friend; finally, that even with the war over he is in greater danger and further from his parents than ever. War, peace, friend, foe, cause, effect, even the distinction between life and death ... these cease to have meaning for Jim. Finally, Jim is saved in an almost deus ex machina fashion by the heroic Dr. Ransome, a man whose selfless actions mildly amuse and baffle Jim, who cannot quite understand this brand of humanity which is quite different from the one he learned through his own experiences. Ransome's life is one that takes certain things for granted. Jim has not been afforded this luxury.

Jim's reunion with his parents is another, critical difference between the movie and the book. The "happily-ever after" ending in the movie is filled with hope and relief. Jim and his parents don't recognize each other at first. Then they do. This symbolizes that the war is finally over for Jim, now he can go back to a normal life. The End. In the book, however, the ending is much more nuanced. Despite returning "home" to Shanghai, Jim's home will forever be Lunghua in the novel version. Normalcy will never be a suburban life in England, for Jim it is wartime Shanghai. The odds of Jim being able to live what most of us would call a "normal life" are practically zero ... after all, he has just experienced a lifetime of events more "real" and vivid than "normal life" could ever be; the war never ends for Jim. Seeing the far-from-normal life Ballard himself has led, and the fiction he has written, one realizes that even though "Jim" and "J.G. Ballard" may not quite be the same person (one crucial difference--Ballard is never separated from his parents), Ballard is still the adult that Jim would have grown up to be. It is this honest and uncompromising portrayal of Jim as a true tragic hero that separates the book from the movie, and makes this book one of the truly great accounts of surviving a brutal war that knows and shows no mercy.

"Are you still interested in aeroplanes, Jim? You'll have to join the R.A.F. 'I'm going to join the Japanese Air Force.' The widows tittered, still unsure of Jim's sense of humour."

"He had been trying to keep the war alive, and the security he had known in the camp. It was time to face the present, the rule that had sustained him through years of the war."

"A flash of light filled the stadium, as if an immense bomb exploded northeast of Shanghai. It faded in a few seconds, but a pale sheen covered everything. Prisoners on the grass sat on the floor of a furnace, heated by a second sun."

"Jim glanced at the people around him, the clerks and the coolies and peasant women, well aware of what they were thinking. One day China would punish the rest of the world and take a frightening revenge."

*********

J G Ballard lived in the Shanghai British Concession from his birth in 1930 to the end of the war in 1945. During the 1937 invasion of China he witnessed the Japanese bombings and battles from inside the International Settlement. In 1943 his family were relocated to an internment camp for foreigners after the occupation of Hong Kong. This 1984 novel reflects some of the experiences he had as a youth. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a popular movie in 1987.

Ballard's story opens in Shanghai December 1941 on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack. The narrator Jim is an eleven year old boy who describes city life circumscribed by troops from Japan. Poverty and desperation in the Chinese is contrasted with the wealth and ease of Europeans, who are nonetheless anxious about the war's outcome. Jim admires the Japanese for their courage and Communists for their subversion. He finds skeletons in fields and corpses floating in the river.

Seen through the eyes of a child, Shanghai's nightclubs and casinos overflow with gangsters and bargirls. People flee the city, selling jewelry in the street, as they crowd onto the last steamers to Hong Kong. The spectacle of Shanghai comes to life in the memories of J G Ballard. Exploring the destroyed airfield, Jim finds crashed bombers and trenches of troops. He fantasizes becoming a pilot and fighting alongside Japan, but soon watches as the naval shelling of Shanghai begins.

Separated from his parents and escaping a hospital ward Jim returns home, now alone in his abandoned mansion. Tanks roll by in the streets and planes fly through the air. Houses of friends are empty, their belongings in shambles. Japanese patrols relocate British and Americans to makeshift camps outside of town. Starving, he survives on leftover tins found in homes and by handouts from soldiers. He rides his bicycle through the city, a target for crime and spite by the locals.

Jim crosses the Huangpu river on a rotted sampan to rusting carcasses of merchant ships, moored in Pudong opposite of the Bund. He is taken in by two American seamen living on a wreck, refugees who think he might be worth something. They make a living by plucking gold teeth from mouths of the dead. Jim leads them on with tales of his former life of luxury. An attempt to burglarize fancy homes ends in his capture and confinement in a Japanese detention center.

Malaria and dysentery plague the detainees but Jim is glad to be off the streets. As the war continues the Japanese run out of food and guards, and he is left for dead on a forced march to another facility. American planes drop food, delaying his starvation. He hasn't found his parents and wonders if he will see them again. An irony of this book is Jim suffers the hardships of war but still sympathizes with the Japanese. Critical of his own empire, he has admiration for another.

Ballard's description of Shanghai deserves its accolades as a compelling account of WWII told by an eyewitness. His 2008 autobiography 'Miracles of Life' tells how he quit Cambridge medical school, joined the Royal Air Force, and became a notable writer. For anyone who is interested in the history and cityscape of Shanghai this novel is a powerful memoir. The film is excellent too, nominated for six academy awards, featuring early performances by actors who are now stars.

The author, born in Shanghai, China, in 1930, explains in the Foreword that this novel is based on his experiences during World War Two, during which he was interned from 1942 to 1945, in his early teens. Indeed, the main character Jim is separated from his parents. The 1987 film by Steven Spielberg makes a big to-do of their separation, but in the book it seems to happen as it might happen to a child. One moment his parents are present, as he is knocked down in a certain melee. The next moment his mother is gone: “Jim’s mother had disappeared, cut off from him by the column of military trucks” (32). Then his father lies down with him, but mysteriously, the next day Jim finds himself alone in a hospital, hoping his parents will come for him soon.

This bright boy must now negotiate the muddy and treacherous waters of wartime virtually on his own. I was inspired by a recent viewing of the film to read the book. I recall many of the movie’s scenes as they unfold on the pages. However, Spielberg takes some liberties, as film directors are wont to do, in order to tell his story. The novel is multi-layered, with countless poignant and sad scenes, but Spielberg turns it into a boy’s adventure story. Both are great, but they are not equally great works.

In the beginning, the eleven-year-old Jim, intelligent though he is, possesses childish and feckless notions:

“He thought of telling Mr. Maxted that not only had he left the cubs and become an atheist, but he might become a Communist as well. The Communists had an intriguing ability to unsettle everyone, a talent Jim greatly respected” (15).

And like a child he tends to think about things with a limited point of view:

“Jim had little idea of his own future—life in Shanghai was lived wholly within an intense present—but he imagined himself growing up to be like Mr. Maxted” (16).

Early on Jim grasps what death is all about, yet also a certain irony he may not fully understand until later:

“In many ways the skeletons were more live than the peasant farmers who had briefly tenanted their bones. Jim felt his cheeks and jaw, trying to imagine his own skeleton in the sun, lying here in this peaceful field within sight of the deserted aerodrome” (17).

As a child might, Jim feels he is responsible for things that are not really his fault, again, largely because he lacks the full picture that an adult would see.

The novel, like a children’s story, moves from one episode to the next, one scene to the next. I found it hard to follow at first. But then I realized that perhaps Ballard wishes for the reader to experience this daze that Jim is in, the chaotically episodic nature of his life over a period of several years, as he struggles to stay alive. Even though he periodically wonders where his parents are, even wonders what they look like, his main focus is on staying alive. His body suffers malnutrition. He develops pus-laden gums.

In my Kindle I highlighted the word sun, sunlight, and many synonyms for the word. Ballard seems to be saying two things. One, the Japanese empire, whose symbol seems to be that big red sun on its flag, is stretching its domain to include China. The sun also seems to symbolize a brighter day for Jim and the thousands of other refugees of their war. Ballard’s use of it is never heavy-handed; the “sun” just seems to appear as a natural part of this war-torn world.

I’ve read other war (anti-war) novels: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Heller’s Catch-22, and others. This novel captures yet a different war, part of the Pacific theater, but it is seen through the eyes of a boy, who at times perceives things poorly because he is a child, and at the same time grasps what’s happening precisely because his innocence allows him to see the truth. And his point of view often allows him to sidestep the callous or evil actions or adults, even those who profess to be looking out for him. Ballard seems to cast little judgment over this war. It is only where this young man is trapped, alive, yet half dead. Ballard’s last paragraph works as a précis of his entire novel:

“Below the bows of the Arrawa a child’s coffin moved onto the night stream. Its paper flowers were shaken loose by the wash of a landing craft carrying sailors from the American cruiser. The flowers formed a wavering garland around the coffin as it began its long journey to the estuary of the Yangtze, only to be swept back by the incoming tide among the quays and mud flats, driven once again to the shores of this terrible city” (279).

Jim and his parents are reunited very quietly (unlike the film). Though they return to England, others are not so fortunate. Many, like the child's coffin, are swept back to Shanghai.

I first saw the movie starring a very young Christian Bale and the excellent John Malkovich multiple times over 20 years ago. The movie was so moving and well done that recently I ordered and read the book, which was even better. Then I re-watched the movie and found so many new meanings and nuances in scenes that I thought I was very familiar with. When a book is excellent, and can be translated into a relatable and moving screenplay, casted appropriately, and directed with excellence, magic happens. Too bad so many poor books are made into movies today and/or good books made into bad movies, which can then cause an audience to blame an author for poor film-making decisions. Even if you haven't seen the movie, read Empire of the Sun. You won't be sorry. (Then watch the movie!!!)

I had to read this novel along with an 11th grade student who had been assigned it. The story is certainly a good story about survival, and it does give the reader a feel of the horrible conditions that these prisoners of war as well as the Chinese people suffered under the Japanese during this period after Pearl Harbor. However, in the context of "literature", since this was a "literature based" class, the book, to me, falls short because its appeal is too one-sided -- appealing to men, or in this case, young men who are students. I cannot imagine this book in an academic environment just like I have difficulty with a book like the Secret Life of Bees, disliked by a lot of young men who claim it is geared for women readers.However, if one is interested in the Asian arena of WW II and what being a civilian in a Japanese prison camp was like, this book captures the hardships the prisoners suffered and the violence imposed on them by their guards. It is a story of survival, and some images may be very disturbing for readers sensitive to gore.

I saw the movie many years before I read the book. The movie was quite interesting. It illustrated a book I hadn't read yet the book itself makes an interesting story out of a harrowing experience. Much was left out for obvious reasons but a narrative of more than four years would have been less compelling (though I would have slogged though it.). I liked the book. Read it! You will be glad you did.

Shocking how modern pre-war Shanghai felt- air conditioning, private schools, limousines, globalized commerce, shiny airplanes. But the savage descent into a struggle against starvation, cruelty, disease betrayal and indifference to suffering was all the more authentic through the eyes of a child / adolescent. Death everywhere. JG Ballard was a survivor that is for sure- but he basically got lucky over and over again. Gripping read.

A Classic for a reason.

Highly recommended, must read

This is the first novel I have read by J G Ballard and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Based on his personal experience. Good story, good plot lines, engaging and believable characters, all the ingredients of a great story.

Llego en perfectas condiciones y a tiempo

"Empire of the Sun" is one of the most haunting books I have ever read. It took me a while to get into the story, as I found the beginning somewhat repetitive, but by a third of the way in I was gripped.

It's a loose autobiography, based on Ballard's own experiences of the fall of Shanghai and the civilian internment camp at Lunghua, as he was aged between 11 and 14. The themes covered include the loss of innocence, the breakdown of civilisation, survival and the question of freedom.

I was particularly struck by the imagery in the book, the constant juxtaposition of brutal and harrowing images against the remnants of the 1930s British ex-pat life with its cricket bats, gramophones and tennis racquets, like a Betjeman poem against the backdrop of a recurring nightmare.

The honesty and matter-of-factness of young Jim's acceptance of the horrors as he wheels and deals his way around the camp, and his relish of the war and hero-worship of the Japanese may be upsetting for some, but I can sense that these feelings are exactly those experienced by the author at the time.

This is a book that I certainly won't forget in a hurry.

Kindle版　Print Length: 331 pages

ASIN: B00457WT9E　のレビュー

　J. G. バラードの初期の作品は大昔に翻訳で読んだが、現在のわたしとしては、再読する意欲がない。80年代以降も評価の高い作品を次々に発表しているが、手にとったことはない。

　それでこの作品だが、第二次世界大戦を背景にした自伝的小説として読みはじめた。日本人の作品を含め、この時代を扱った小説は山のようにあるので、そのごく一部分しか知らないが、たぶん、かなりの傑作の部類だろう。

　自伝的とは言うものの、内容は完全なフィクションである。このkindle版には1995年に発表されたThe End of My War というエッセイが収録されている。それによれば、1930年生まれのジム少年は妹を含めた四人家族。対日戦が1941年12月8日始まったわけだが、その後一年ほどは自宅で過ごすことができ、学校も再開された。家族そろって収容所に入っていたのは二年半。前半は食糧事情も日本軍の対応も穏やかだった。また、上海には中立国のヨーロッパ人もたくさんいて、スイス赤十字からの援助もあった。収容所の責任者は立派な人物で、後に戦犯裁判にかけられたさい、ジムの父のバラード氏が弁護して無罪になったそうだ。

　というわけで、この小説のストーリーとはまったく異なる事情だったわけだ。

　しかし、この作品に描かれるモノ、臭いとほこり、臓物と膿と血液と小便と大便、ハマダラカとハエとコクゾウムシ、マラリアと脚気、泥とヘドロと油膜、それらのものはみなジム少年のまわりに日常的にあったことだろう。上海在住のブリテン人、召使いやアマ、宣教団体のブリテン人、民間人のアメリカ人、日本兵、ユーラシアン、そして背後にうごめくチャイニーズ、それぞれが少年の目と通して描かれる。

　小説の紹介として順序が逆になったが、構成は三部に分かれている。第一部は開戦の日から三か月ほど。第二部は終戦前の三か月ほど。第三部は8月15日以後。つまり真ん中の三年ほどが省かれている。短い41の章に分けられ、各章はスケッチ風の短編小説風である。ただし、SF作品とは違い、読んだあと何がなんだかわからない不条理な作品ではない（あ、不条理とかシュールって便利な言葉だが、いまいち内容がないね）。視点人物はジム少年に固定しているし、話の流れもある。

　kindle版には、このほかTravis Elboroughによる2006年のインタビューも収録。スピルバーグ監督の映画を作者は気に入っていて時々見るのだそうだ。へえ、意外だ。たいていの作家は自作の映画化に文句つけたり無視したりするものだが。インタビューの中で自伝で書くつもりはないと語っているが、その後2008年に自伝発表。2009年死去。