![]() After the war, he and his family went to England. His early life is described in Empire of the Sun, in particular his internment in a Japanese camp, following the Fall of Singapore. James Graham Ballard was born in Shanghai, China in 1930, where his father worked. Any writer who can produce a work called Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan (well before old dodderer became president) and one of the two first class novels to damn Thatcher and her works (the other is Jonathan Coe‘s What a Carve-Up!) is definitely worthy of your consideration. ![]() It is just that this is his least innovative work and his other works tend to get ignored. Not that this is a bad book on the contrary, it is an excellent book and was made into an excellent film by Steven Spielberg. It is unfortunate that he is most recognised for Empire of the Sun. ![]() The only reason he is not recognised as the most important English writer of the second half of the twentieth century is that he is all too often damned as a science fiction writer and nothing else. When many of his English contemporaries were doing afternoon teas, gritty Northern realism, urbane but bland satires or”entertainments”, Ballard was out discovering both inner and outer space. ![]()
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