Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come. 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. Gold title * Published to great acclaim in 1984, 'Empire of the Sun' won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker. * 'Empire of the Sun' has also been made into a major motion picture by Steven Spielberg.

* J.G. Ballard has been at the forefront of modern British fiction for over three decades, achieving remarkable critical acclaim and commercial success. * Ballard's most recent novel 'Kingdom Come' has sold over 27,000 copies in the UK alone. Competition: the kindness of women;cocaine nights;crash;drowned world;power of the dog;human traces;the narrow road to the deep north. thomas savage;sebastian faulks;richard flanagan;antonio iturbe;martin amis;anthony burgess;will self;colm toibin;heather morris.