Steven Spielberg's film adapts J. G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel about a British boy separated from his parents in Shanghai and interned in a Japanese camp during the Second World War.
Book· 1984· Historical
Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun: 1 recorded work traces back to it, and it draws on 2 recorded sources.
What Empire of the Sun influenced
Works that record this one as a source, with the evidence a contributor gave.
Real-world influences
Events, places, movements and ideas outside fiction that this work is recorded as drawing on.
Personal Experiences
Real world
Real-world influenceHIGH
- Childhood
- Imprisonment
J. G. Ballard grew up in Shanghai and spent the Second World War interned by the Japanese in the Lunghua camp with his family. The novel turns that childhood into fiction, separating the boy from his parents, which Ballard's own were not.
History
Real world
Real-world influenceHIGH
- World War II
- Imperial Japan
The novel follows the Japanese occupation of Shanghai's International Settlement after Pearl Harbor, life in the internment camps and the war's end, as Ballard lived through them.