Empire of the sun door J.G. Ballard

Main characters: Jim, he’s an eleven years old boy. He lives with his parents in Shanghai in the time when the war with the Japanese starts. He is official Brittish but he supports the Japanese because he thinks the Brittish soldiers are losers.

Basie, he’s an American soldier and he picks Jim up when he lost his parents. He’s very sellfish and he only uses Jim to sell him to the Chinese. When Basie starts to know Jim better he tries to protect him.

Summary: Jim lives with his parents in Shanghai when the second world war is beginning. He is always sitting near the harbor to watch the ships and when the Japanese attach began on 2 Brittish ships he was looking at it. The attack leads to a total chaos and he tries with his father to save some people from the ship. Because it was such a chaos he lost his father and he wakes up in the hospital. After a few days he can go home but when he came home the total house was empty. He is now for himself in Shanghai and he decided to wander through Shanghai for as long as it takes. He tries to surrender himself to the Japanese so he would be send to a concentrationcamp and he thinks he would met his parents there. That doesn’t work and he joined 2 American soldiers who wanted to sell Jim but that didn’t work because Jim was way too skinny and he would be sick every week when he has to work. When Jim shows the soldiers his old home the Japanese were there to rob the house and all three were arrested. Jim comes together with basie (the oldest soldier) in a detention center. After a few months they were sent to a concentration camp. Jim likes it because he thinks he would see his parents again in the camp. Jim and Basie come in a camp in Lunghua where he stays for 3 years. In the time of the concentration camp the Japanese are losing the war and they get less and less food. Many people die because of the hunger and right before the end of the war Basie escaped from the camp but Jim stayed because he was used to the Japanese.