Her death in 1964 devastated him and death became a recurring theme in his writing. From 1954 to 1957 he served as a pilot for the Royal Air Force.īallard married Helen Matthews in 1953 and had three children. He became a regular contributor to New Worlds magazine. However, he was eventually reunited with them in Lunghua prison camp, where the three remained prisoners until the camp was liberated by the American army.īallard left China when he was sixteen and later studied medicine at Cambridge University from 1949 to 1951. Like Jim, the protagonist of Empire of the Sun, Ballard was a child when World War II began and, like Jim, he wandered the city of Shanghai after being separated from his parents. Ballard was born on November 15, 1930, in Shanghai. In this moving coming-of-age tale, Jim lets go of his innocent ideas about war and heroism and in the process reveals the meaning of courage, tenacity, and faith in the endurance of the human spirit. The novel has been praised for its vivid portrayal of the devastating effects of war and the psychology of survival as seen through the eyes of a young boy.
It is there that he faces the harsh realities of war and learns important lessons about human nature. When the fighting comes to Shanghai, Jim is separated from his parents and sent to a prison camp.
In the novel, Ballard chronicles the semi-autobiographical experiences of an eleven-year-old British boy named Jim living in China during World War II. Many commentators regard it as one of the finest war novels ever written. When Empire of the Sun was published in 1984, it quickly became a critical and commercial success.
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