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Evelyn Waugh's most celebrated work is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the story mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities; in so doing it also provides a profound study of the conflict between the demands of religion and the desires of the flesh.
From the author of the Sunday Times best seller Cocaine Nights comes an unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control. Within the concealing walls of an elegant 40-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on 'enemy' floors, and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem.
The latest novel from number-one internationally best-selling author Paulo Coelho is a classic of inspiration and reflection, a meditation on life, love, and the significance of change. A novel of philosophical reflection set in Jerusalem during the time of the Crusades. Here a community of Christians, Arabs, and Jews who have long lived together harmoniously have been warned of an imminent attack and certain destruction. Contemplating their demise, the community assembles to seek the wise counsel of a Greek Copt.
Faust is one of the pillars of Western literature. This classic drama presents the story of the scholar Faust, tempted into a contract with the Devil in return for a life of sensuality and power. Enjoyment rules, until Faust’s emotions are stirred by a meeting with Gretchen, and the tragic outcome brings Part 1 to an end. Part 2, written much later in Goethe’s life, places his eponymous hero in a variety of unexpected circumstances, causing him to reflect on humanity and its attitudes to life and death.
A chilling novel about our modern world, from the author of Empire of the Sun and Crash. An architect is driving home from his London offices when a blow-out sends his speeding Jaguar hurtling out of control. Smashing through a temporary barrier he finds himself, dazed and disorientated, on a traffic island below three converging motorways. But when he tries to climb the embankment or flag-down a passing car for help it proves impossible - and he finds himself marooned on the concrete island.
Lovecraft’s gothic horror masterpiece. During an investigation in Red Hook, Detective Thomas F. Malone, and discovers horrors that he never imagined. A horror classic.
Evelyn Waugh's most celebrated work is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the story mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities; in so doing it also provides a profound study of the conflict between the demands of religion and the desires of the flesh.
From the author of the Sunday Times best seller Cocaine Nights comes an unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control. Within the concealing walls of an elegant 40-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on 'enemy' floors, and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem.
The latest novel from number-one internationally best-selling author Paulo Coelho is a classic of inspiration and reflection, a meditation on life, love, and the significance of change. A novel of philosophical reflection set in Jerusalem during the time of the Crusades. Here a community of Christians, Arabs, and Jews who have long lived together harmoniously have been warned of an imminent attack and certain destruction. Contemplating their demise, the community assembles to seek the wise counsel of a Greek Copt.
Faust is one of the pillars of Western literature. This classic drama presents the story of the scholar Faust, tempted into a contract with the Devil in return for a life of sensuality and power. Enjoyment rules, until Faust’s emotions are stirred by a meeting with Gretchen, and the tragic outcome brings Part 1 to an end. Part 2, written much later in Goethe’s life, places his eponymous hero in a variety of unexpected circumstances, causing him to reflect on humanity and its attitudes to life and death.
A chilling novel about our modern world, from the author of Empire of the Sun and Crash. An architect is driving home from his London offices when a blow-out sends his speeding Jaguar hurtling out of control. Smashing through a temporary barrier he finds himself, dazed and disorientated, on a traffic island below three converging motorways. But when he tries to climb the embankment or flag-down a passing car for help it proves impossible - and he finds himself marooned on the concrete island.
Lovecraft’s gothic horror masterpiece. During an investigation in Red Hook, Detective Thomas F. Malone, and discovers horrors that he never imagined. A horror classic.
A collection of 98 enthralling and pulse-quickening stories, spanning five decades, venerates the remarkable imagination of J. G. Ballard. With a body of work unparalleled in twentieth-century literature, J. G. Ballard is recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic writers in the world. With the much-hailed release of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard, readers now have a means to celebrate the unmatched range and mesmerizing cadences of a literary genius.
Hans Christian Andersen's story of the tin soldier and the hardships he endures for the love of a ballerina has enchanted children over the years. This elegant narration of the poignant classic by Jeremy Irons will charm young and old alike.
Hugh Legat is a rising star of the British diplomatic service, serving as a private secretary to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Rikard von Holz is on the staff of the German Foreign Office--and secretly a member of the anti-Hitler resistance. The two men were friends at Oxford in the 1920s, but have not been in contact since. Now, when Hugh flies with Chamberlain from London to Munich, and Rikard travels on Hitler's train overnight from Berlin, their paths are set on a disastrous collision course.
When Lewis Luby (Jeremy Irons) comes to, late at night in an Italian hospital, he finds himself lying under the monstrous big toe of God. Surely there has been some mistake: Luby, who has never for one moment believed in the immortality of the soul, cannot possibly be in heaven! John Mortimer had the idea for Mr Luby's Fear of Heaven when he first visited the Santa Maria della Scala hospital in Siena and saw patients lying in beds under ceilings decorated with 15th-Century frescoes depicting Heaven and Hell.
The year is A.D. 922. A refined Arab courtier, representative of the powerful Caliph of Baghdad, encounters a party of Viking warriors who are journeying to the barbaric North. He is appalled by their Viking customs - the wanton sexuality of their pale, angular women, their disregard for cleanliness...their cold-blooded human sacrifices. But it is not until they reach the depths of the Northland that the courtier learns the horrifying and inescapable truth.
In Craiglockhart war hospital, Dr William Rivers attempts to restore the sanity of officers from World War I. When Siegfried Sassoon publishes his declaration of protest against the war, the authorities decide to have him declared mentally defective and send him to Craiglockhart.
This Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author’s words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened - muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox."
This New York Times best-seller is the astonishing life story of award-winning humanitarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A deeply respected advocate for free speech and women's rights, Hirsi Ali also lives under armed protection because of her outspoken criticism of the Islamic faith in which she was raised.
Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Star Wars films), fresh off the success of his uproarious, Audie-nominated performance of the mock children’s book Go the F**k to Sleep, delivers a swaggering, darkly-humored rendering of Chester Himes’ classic first novel.
Here is a collection of the Oscar Wilde's famous fairy tales, read by a cast of leading British actors. Additional narrators include Geoffrey Palmer O.B.E., Sir Donald Sinden, and Elaine Stritch. Music: 'Reverie De Sebastian' by Steve Davies.
Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman gives an understated and exemplary performance of this satiric look at the unreality of American media culture. Chance, the enigmatic gardener, becomes Chauncey Gardiner after getting hit by a limo belonging to a Wall Street tycoon. The whirlwind that follows brings Chance to his new status of political policy advisor and possible vice presidential candidate. His garden-variety political responses, inspired by television, become heralded as visionary, and he is soon a media icon.
Once upon a time, a teenaged Kate Winslet (The Reader, Titanic, Revolutionary Road) received a gift that would leave a lasting impression: a copy of Emile Zola’s classic Thérèse Raquin. Six Academy Award nominations and one Best Actress award later, she steps behind the microphone to perform this haunting classic of passion and disaster.
Winner of the Guardian fiction prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
From the master of dystopia, comes his heartrending story of a British boy’s four-year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. 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 20th century will be not only remembered but judged.
J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. He published his first novel, The Drowned World, in 1961. His 1984 best seller, Empire of the Sun, won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg. His memoir Miracles of Life was published in 2008. J. G. Ballard died in 2009.
Quite unlike anything I've read or listened to before. The characterisation is brilliant. Thematically powerful in an understated way. The tone of the narrator is ideally suited to the text.
A brilliant book that takes you on a ( sometimes harrowing) journey through China during ww2.
My own knowledge of the war was somewhat Eurocentric, this book has widened my perspective particularly in relation to Japanese Pow's and their experiences. When you hear people say, oh he never really 'came back' from the Japanese camps, ' he/ she was never the same after' this book gives us detailed insight into why this is so often the case.
Narration is absolutely spot on, it would have been spoiled by 'sentimental'reading which would have been an easy trap to fall into.
As it's written from a child's perspective it is matter of fact despite the traumatic experiences.
The sort of book ideal for long drives as you can drift in and out of the story and don't need to be constantly focussed!
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
This was not as I had expected - and not my usual choice. It is a stark and very vivid story of war time experience from a child's point of view. The narrator enhances the story to give the reader an insight into the cold and resigned emotions that develop within the child - without sensationalism or over dramatisation. Very moving and quite disturbing in parts. I would recommend this book for the quality and strength of the writing.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful
One of the best audiobooks I have purchased recently. Gave a very realistic description of what is must have been like in the Far East at the end of the Second World War.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
I was not sure what to expect from this book. I have read other Jg Ballard novels and enjoyed them, but this is different, being based on his own experience during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in WW2. The narration is excellent, bringing life and individuality to each of the characters and expressing both Jim's youthful naivety and the protracted suffering the internees endured. Towards the end of the book I was often in tears as Jim fought to survive and make sense of his world. The reader expertly conveys Jim's fragile mental state after years of depravation and seeing so many people die. The poignant ending sees Jim return to his childhood home in the city and then embark on a journey into an uncertain future, I thoroughly recommend this book.
13 of 17 people found this review helpful
I have not seen the film, but highly recommend the book/ audible.
WW2 books usually centre around Europe and we can often forget about VJ Day and what surrounded and lead to it.
The book is a grim, no messing tale of young Jim and his parents living in Shangai prior to the war breaking out. The outbreak of war and his subsequent internment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. It focuses on his time there, the horrors of daily life and also the small things that kept them going. With VJ Day sees Jim returning to shanghai, reuniting with his parents.
The last three hours are very sad and graphic in Jims dwindling mental state but intrinsic to this great story.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I must have been living under a rock or something as I have only recently
heard of this book although I now understand it's a classic. I picked up
this on sale on a two for one offer as I was not quite sure about it but
felt I ought to give it a listen as it was a story based during World War
II and told from the perspective of a child caught up at the start of the
war with Japan which is a subject of interest to me.
The sample piqued my curiosity and so read this book I did. The first thing
I noticed about this story was the writing style. It certainly felt like a
story written in a more classical type of prose that made frequent use of
metaphor. This rich style of writing was highly evocative and really painted
a vivid picture of the world in which we find young Jim thrown into. The
first part of the story that sees Jim losing his parents in the confusion of
war and following him on his journeys in search of them is brilliantly done.
The middle portion of the story sees Jim held in an interment camp and for
me the narrative waned a little here meandering somewhat although still
interesting. The final part of the story sees Jim on his travels again and
here once more Ballard paints a rich world for the reader to see in their
mind's eye.
One thing I would say is it is probably worth avoiding snacking while
listening to this as I was on several occasions put off my food with the
multiple references to all forms of human waste as well as lurid
descriptions of dead bodies.
The overall story is interesting but I did find it odd how a lone child was
so ignored and even treated badly by adults in the camps. I imagined that
this would not be realistic but then again, perhaps it was. Just seemed a
very harsh and uncaring environment with some adults only wanting to use the
child. Jim's naivety is shocking at times but it's probably a product of his
upbringing into a privileged world in addition to the time period. This
naivety protects Jim's mind from the horrors of war insulating him to the
extent that death in all its forms seems to hold little fear or revulsion for
him. On the flip side this naivety places his person in jeopardy at times
too.
I did come across one or two inconsistencies in the narrative though. One
example was when characters are referenced in the stadium and subsequently
Jim muses as to whether they died on the way to that stadium.
Steven Pacey does an excellent job of the narration and his classically
British sounding voice matches the tone and time period of this tale
perfectly.
Overall this book tells the brutal story of how the Japanese treated their
prisoners during the war and spares the reader little of the inhumane
conditions endured by the inmates. It also shines a light on the way people
behave under such circumstances.
Empire of The Sun is a powerful read that can be depressing, shocking, sad,
funny and brutal as well as seeming a little surreal at times given Jim's
innocence and how he sees the world.
I enjoyed the film and I’ve seen it a few times. For some reason, I never got round to reading the book. The narration throughout is excellent and adds a totally different dimension to the story. It’s far more brutal and the deprivations are harsh and well depicted. Jim’s strangeness comes across immediately. His odd attitudes and questioning mind are apparent. His insights into the occupation of Shanghai by the Japanese and how the expats were treated is often harrowing. Not always easy listening, but a remarkable story.
This is probably the first book narayed by Stephen pacey I didn't enjoy.
His narrative was superb but content was so heavy that I struggled to get through the book.
Back to the first law for me where Pacey really shines!!
One of my favourite books of all time beautifully read. Highly recommended to readers of all ages.
A wonderfully delivered modern classic. What more can one say. It is the Second World War from a unique - human - perspective. The life of a child in death and suffering.
'Empire of the Sun' is by far the best war book I have read. Not that I am a big reader of war books at all. I tend to avoid the fiction books as I have found over the years that no matter the imagination of the author, war was entirely more gruesome, graphic and even funnier than anything that could eventuate from one human mind. I find most war fiction embarrassing and trite.
However, while 'Empire of the Sun' could be classed as a memoir, the author freely admits that his experiences are not exactly the same as young Jim, the protagonist of this tale. I guess most memoirs stretch the truth and make adjustments from reality to suit the format, J.G. has just admitted that he went a little further. Here Jim loses contact with his parents early in the novel during a siege on the city and we know that J.G. was interned with his parents in real life. Maybe there is more fiction than non-fiction here and I may need to eat my words.
There is so much to love in here, but I think this book may not be for everyone. Firstly, this book is pretty graphic in it's description of Jim's surroundings. There are realistic descriptions of corpses, death and disease throughout. But it's never gratuitous and it's always frank. It's not a novel with an uplifting tale of adversity. Yes, you could make a great guess that Jim survives the ordeal, but does he or anyone overcome adversity? Not at all. This is definitely not a rallying book. You do not cheer on the good guys. And despite what Hollywood would make you think, you do not cheer on the end of the war.
And I think that is one of the big messages of the book. War does not start on a declaration and it does not end with a surrender.You do not flip the war coin to find peace written in shiny silver letters. It seems to be that the happiest years of young Jim's life were when he was eating one sweet potato a day, slowly wasting away, getting every disease that came his way all the while running around an internement camp idolising the Japanese pilots and ingratiating himself to the Japanese officer in charge of the camp. Throughout the book Jim wants the Japanese to win the war and does not see how they can lose it because they have the bravest soldiers in his opinion.
J.G. really does capture the naive innocence yet canny and literal understanding that children have. Adult speech is littered with sarcasm, exaggeration and metaphors that children take literally. Only their observations of the world around them hold true. Jim knows when someone is about to die in the camp hospital as they were given the one and only mosquito net. And yet he could not understand when the war had ended nor could he understand why the next war hadn't started when everyone in the camp was saying "The next World War will start soon" in reference to the communist rising.
The fact that Jim adapts to his life much more than any adult is unsurprising.
So, for me, this is a damn magnificent read. I valued the look at war from a child's perspective. I also learnt that the end of war can be worse than war itself and the story is far from over when the diplomats shake hands and documents are signed.