The '';profound and moving work of the imagination'' (Los Angeles Times Book Review) that inspired the classic motion picture by Steven Spielberg, tells the epic story of a young boy''s struggle to survive World War II in China.

Shanghai, 1941a 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.

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.