The Kindness of Women

The Kindness of Women is a much awaited sequel to J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun - an account of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during WWII.

Beginning once again in Shanghai, but from a new perspective, The Kindness of Women follows young James through Lunghua prison camp to England at the close of war. The change is wrenching, and it is only after prep school, an unsuccessful few semesters as a medical student at Cambridge, and a stint as a trainee RAF pilot in northwest Canada, that he manages to find an equilibrium. In Shepperton, a suburb of London, he settles happily into several years of family life.

The Kindness of Women is a remarkable hybrid of fiction and autobiography.