Empire Of The Sun

Jim's silver lining
war is a grand adventure
just go a bit nuts.

Having tried a couple of JG Ballards previous books (Cocaine Nights and Crash) and finding them unsuited to me, and dated, I hadn't really sought this one out. A couple of reviews last year peaked my interest, and a cheap copy came my way at a suitable time.

So it turns out the reviews were right, and this was a great read.

The plot outline is easy to find, so I won't repeat it here. Even the blurb outlines it well in a few sentences.

Things I enjoyed in Ballard's book were - the short chapters, with the punchy titles; the development of our main character over the 4 year period of the story; the raw nature of the descriptions of war - played on by the honest view of a child. From a writing perspective, I thought it clever and well devised the way Ballard explained that Jim knew adults were taking advantage of him, but he played along nevertheless; and the way Ballard explained Jim's simultaneous views of pleasure and disappointment that the war is over.

Ballard makes Jim a powerful character with his deep thought, planning and willingness to ingratiate himself where appropriate.

At the end of my edition(Harper Perennial Modern Classics) there was a short interview with Ballard, and a copy of an article he had written in 1995 for the Sunday Times where he described the personal circumstances of the war for he and his family. This was interesting to see which parts of his story he changed for the novel. A surprising amount followed his personal experiences. The major differences were that he was with his parents during his time in Lunghua, and they never made the long trek to the stadium.

A few quotes:

All around them were the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers. They lined the verges of the roads and floated in the canals, jammed together around the pillars of the bridges. In the trenches between the burial mounds hundreds of dead soldiers sat side by side with their heads against the torn earth, as if they had fallen asleep together in a deep dream of war.-Jim watched them eat, his eyes fixed on every morsel that entered their mouth. When the oldest of the four soldiers had finished he scraped some burnt rice and fish scales from the side of the cooking pot. A first-class private of some forty years, with slow, careful hands, he beckoned Jim forward and handed him his mess tin. As they smoked their cigarettes the Japanese smiled to themselves, watching Jim devour the shreds of fatty rice. It was his first hot food since he had left he hospital, and the heat and greasy flavour stung his gums. Tears swam in his eyes. The Japanese soldier who had taken pity on Jim, recognising that this small boy was starving, began to laugh good-naturedly, and pulled the rubber plug from his metal water-bottle. Jim drank the clear, chlorine-flavoured liquid, so unlike the stagnant water in the taps of the Columbia Road. He choked, carefully swallowed his vomit, and tittered into his hands, grinning at the Japanese.-The Chinese enjoyed the spectacle of death, Jim had decided, as a way of reminding themselves of how precariously they were alive. They liked to be cruel for the same reason, to remind themselves of the vanity of thinking that the world was anything else.-Jim glanced at the people around him, the clerks and 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.