Published in 1984,'Empire of the Sun' drew on Ballard's experiences as a P.O.W. under Japanese occupation in World War II. The actual autobiographical experience was captured in a 1980s documentary Ballard made for the BBC and an article 'The End of My War' written for the Sunday Times in 1995 (the latter is collected in the excellent collection 'A User's Guide to the Millennium').Ballard's experience found him in a concentration camp with his family - who aren't here and a gruesomeness that the writer of 'The Atrocity Exhibition' opted to restrain from. Like the earlier 'Crash' whose lead-character took his name from the author, 'Empire of the Sun' has Jamie Ballard as its lead character - the writer Ballard chanelling the psychological experience as well as the autobiographical and the historical. Fans of Ballard's earlier science fiction works - 'The Drowned World', 'The Drought', the many short stories etc.- will see where the imagery of the tropical, the empty swimming pools and other key aspects of his work stem from. In many ways 'Empire of the Sun' personalises the imagery of his earlier works - while the extremes Ballard explored can be explained by the experiences here. Towards the end Jamie experiences the reaction of the atomic bomb dropped in Japan - something JG Ballard never experienced, but this is in line with the psychology of Ballard's works and elements of interest found in things like the story 'The Terminal Beach' (death, heat, madness, a bikini island atoll) & 'The Atrocity Exhibition'- which focused partly on the atom bomb. The sense of impending apocalypse, the embrace of entropy & the allure of death are all present in 'Empire of the Sun' as they are in the rest of Ballard's canon. He did not compromise to make a best-seller in anyway - though saying that, I think this is more than suitable reading for a teenager - which is probably not something I'd say about 'Crash' or 'High Rise'!

The evidence that Ballard did not compromise in anyway is demonstrated by the trademark chapter titles which have much in common with titles of short stories and chapters in prior works - 'The Drained Swimming Pool', 'The Open-Air Cinema', 'The Abandoned Aerodrome', 'The Cemetery Garden', 'The Empire of the Sun'...all could have featured in earlier works (...and some did - have a look at the LSD-inflected freeform experiment that was 'The Atrocity Exhibition'). The acrobat found in 'Concrete Island' is explained by the acrobat here, as the drained swimming pools or overloaded tropics of 'The Drowned World' (also reissued alongside this) are...

'Empire of the Sun' is a great novel, not only one of the key novels of the 1980s alongside 'Remains of the Day', 'The Cement Garden', 'Money', 'Earthly Powers', & 'The Wasp Factory' but one of the great novels. It's one of the books of Ballard's I come back to the most - having read it several times and likely several times more (this new reissue is very tempting). I'd say it is one of his key works alongside 'The Atrocity Exhibition', 'Crash', 'The Drowned World', 'High Rise', 'Super Cannes', 'The Terminal Beach', 'The Unlimited Dream Company' & 'The Voices of Time'.

'Empire of the Sun' is also a reminder, a report from the frontline of the experience of war and as such demands to be read in relation to that theme (it's suggested reading in Sebastian Faulks' recent collection of war fiction). It easily belongs alongside key novels concerning the experience of war - 'Catch 22', 'Slaughterhouse-5', 'The Gallery', 'The Naked & the Dead', 'All is Quiet on the Western Front', 'Journey to the End of the Night' & 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' I think it's one of those key texts that ought to be taught at GCSE-level - a great achievment and one that Ballard was clearly building to with his avant garde, extreme, and SF-inflected works.

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