Miracles of Life
First edition
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| Author | J. G. Ballard |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Autobiography |
| Publisher | Fourth Estate |
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Publication date
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2008 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 278 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 175283644 |
| 823/.914 B 22 | |
| LC Class | PR6052.A46 Z46 2008 |
| Preceded by | Kingdom Come |
Miracles of Life is an autobiography written by British writer J. G. Ballard and published in 2008.
The book describes Ballard's childhood and early teenage years in Shanghai in the 1930s and the early 1940s, when the city is ravaged by the Second Sino-Japanese War in the Battle of Shanghai and World War II. After the happy years spent with his well-to-do family in the Shanghai International Settlement, Ballard experiences the horrors of war and then the deprivations of an internment camp, Lunghua, where he is imprisoned with his parents, his sister, and hundreds of other British, Belgian, Dutch and American nationals.
After being liberated by the Americans in 1945, James "returns" to England with his mother and sister, but the return to a country which he has never known, being born in Shanghai, is made difficult by the dismal atmosphere of post-war Britain and the difficulty of integrating into British society. After beginning medical studies at a prestigious Cambridge college, Ballard suddenly quits the university and enlists in the R.A.F.
The stint with the air force in a Canadian air base will prove to be a wrong move, and Ballard then quits the R.A.F. and returns to Britain. The autobiography subsequently describes his happy marriage, the birth of his children (the "miracles of life" that the title hints at), his wife's sudden and unexpected death, and the ensuing difficulties, which Ballard faces by deciding to raise his children as a single parent.
The book also describes the beginning of his literary career, his friendship with pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi, his experimentation culminating in his destructured novel The Atrocity Exhibition, though less space is devoted to the Sixties and the Seventies than to the 15 years spent in Shanghai. The story of the success of Empire of the Sun and the making of Spielberg's film based on it is told, re-telling in non-novelistic style events already covered in his previous autofiction The Kindness of Women.
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