It took J. G. Ballard 40 years to digest his childhood years in war-torn Shanghai sufficiently to write the book that became a legendary Spielberg film; it took him 50 to write a memoir that really shows how that time influenced him. Listen first to Miracles of Life (Fourth Estate, 4 CDs, read by Tim Pigott-Smith, £14.99) and then Empire of the Sun (HarperPress, 3 CDs, read by Samuel West, £7.99) and you get a marvellous insight into the mind of an artist. You will understand both the truth behind Empire and why Ballard wrote science fiction for so long. Miracles reveals how the ten-year-old child systematically built up a carapace (symbolised by the turtle he adopts as a pet in Empire of the Sun) against the realisation that he could not count on his parents (made absent in his novel) in order to survive for four years in a detention camp.

At this impressionable age it was the Japanese and the Americans who became imprinted in his mind as heroes rather than the mentally defeated British. Coping with this contradiction led to his fascination with Freud and surrealism; ending up as contented as he is now took two happy marriages and three children — along with a talent for writing that won him renown and a circle of literary kindred spirits.

Listen to an extract from Empire of the Sun

Listen to an extract from Miracles of Life

Times Recommends

• 10 things you should avoid in hospital (unless there really is no option)
• Exclusive: Philip Pullman's essential reading list
• The White War by Mark Thompson