Miracles of Life

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 and W.W.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, and Dutch nationals. After being... liberated by the Americans in 1945, James returns to England with his mother and sister, but the return to his home country—which he does not really know, 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 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 quits the R.A.F. and returns to Britain.
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