Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard

Rating: 3.5

What it's about:
"Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him." "Shanghai, 1941 - a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war ... and the dawn of a blighted world." J. G. Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.
-taken from Barnes&Noble.com

My thoughts:
Empire of the Sun is the true story of Jim, a British boy who survives WWII in occupied China by courage and a strong will to survive. He's separated from his parents at the start of the war and is left to his own resourcefulness to become a survivor. The story itself is an amazing firsthand account of war through the eyes of a child. Jim never lets himself slip into despondency or despair. He keeps his spirit alive by watching the air strikes in wonder and awe, by keeping a pet turtle in the internment camp, by reading over and over again the same Life and Reader's Digest magazines and by trying to befriend and help guards and prisoners alike. Empire of the Sun is a great story but I find the writing to be somewhat lacking. It's boring in parts and rather slow. If you can plod through, the book is worth reading when looked back on in it's entirety. People can gain something from seeing the survival of an 11 year old boy in the face of extreme adversity.