Empire of the Sun (4th Estate Matchbook

The classic, heartrending story of a British boy''''s four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp.

One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics'''' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist.

Based on J. G. Ballard''''s own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy''''s life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai - a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.

Rooted as it is in the author''''s own disturbing experience of war in our time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the twentieth century will be not only remembered, but judged.