![]() ![]() The only people I remembered were the dissecting room cadavers.ĭuring the 1960s, the Shanghai of my childhood seemed a portent of the media cities of the future, dominated by advertising and mass circulation newspapers and swept by unpredictable violence. Its magic never faded, whereas I forgot Cambridge within five minutes of leaving that academic theme park, and never wanted to go back. I knew that something similar might happen when I began to write Empire of the Sun, a novel about my life as a boy in Shanghai during the second world war, and in the civilian camp at Lunghua, where I was interned with my parents.Ĭoming to England after the war, and trying to cope with its grey, unhappy people, I hoarded my memories of Shanghai, a city that soon seemed as remote and glamorous as ancient Rome. Within a few hours, a precious trophy of childhood or a first romance can crumble into rust. Hauling them into the daylight can be risky. ![]() Memories have huge staying power, but like dreams, they thrive in the dark, surviving for decades in the deep waters of our minds like shipwrecks on the sea bed. In his article, published in The Guardian he reflects on 40 years of memories and how story re-wrote them. J G Ballard’s 1984 novel Empire of the Sun was made into a Hollywood film in 1987. ![]()
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