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.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard's works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Adam Thirlwell, Hari Kunzru, James Lever and Ali Smith) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.