The classic, heartrending story of a British boy's four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. Based on J. G. Ballard's own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai - a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint. Rooted as it is in the author's own disturbing experience of war in our time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the twentieth century will be not only remembered but judged. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard's works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Adam Thirlwell, Hari Kunzru, James Lever and Ali Smith) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.

Gold title * Published to great acclaim in 1984, it won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker. It has since been made into a major motion picture by Steven Spielberg. * Part of the Matchbook Classics series: ten modern classics from the 4th Estate list - some of the greatest fiction and non-fiction of the last 30 years. * Stunningly packaged in an innovative and unusual format - with a back flap that folds around and tucks in under the front cover, rather like a matchbook.