ABSTRACT
Short-listed for the Booker Prize, and a winner of the Guardian Fiction and the James Tate Black Memorial prizes, Empire of the Sun (1984) is Ballard’s most critically acclaimed novel to date. This autobiographical work, which narrates his childhood experiences of war-torn Shanghai and eventual internment in a Japanese Civilian Centre, was lauded immediately by literary critics as the definitive text in a highly prolific, if sometimes controversially received, oeuvre. With the publication of Empire, Ballard suddenly mattered: the author had come out as a real and worthy person. So what set this particular novel apart from its literary predecessors?
