Empire of the Sun

Empire of the Sun is a 1984 novel written by British author J.G. Ballard. In it, Jim, the 11-year-old son of a wealthy British family, is living in the International Settlement in Shanghai, China on the eve of Pearl Harbor, 1941. When Japanese forces attack the Settlement, Jim is separated from his parents. He survives for several weeks by scavenging food from abandoned houses, before being arrested by the Japanese. He is then taken to a prison camp in the district of Lunghua, where he spends the next three years. When the Japanese start losing the war and with the prisoners starving to death, Jim and the other prisoners are marched to a repurposed football stadium. Many of the prisoners die on the way, but Jim manages to survive. He returns to Lunghua camp, now occupied by the Americans, and is reunited with his parents in Shanghai. He then boards a ship for England, leaving China forever. This guide uses the 2014 Harper Collins edition of the text.

Plot Summary

Empire of the Sun is divided into four parts and forty-two short chapters. This guide contains four analysis sections, each corresponding to roughly ten chapters of the text. In Chapters one through ten, Jim, the 11-year-old son of a wealthy British family and the novel’s

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