Empire of the Sun

Jim Graham is an English schoolboy living a comfortable expatriate life in Shanghai's International Settlement when the attack on Pearl Harbor brings Japanese forces flooding into the city, separating him from his parents in the chaos. Left to fend for himself, he survives for a while by scavenging abandoned houses before deliberately trying to surrender to the Japanese army, an attempt that takes several tries before he's finally interned at a civilian camp. Jim's fascination with the Japanese pilots and their aircraft complicates any simple sense of who the enemy is supposed to be. J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel of a childhood spent inside a world war.