Whilst we all experience hunger, most of us will fortunately never experience significant food shortages or deprivation (although I’m aware that I’m writing this post at a time of great uncertainty about Brexit and the possible implications – for food and a variety of other matters – should we end up with a ‘no deal’).
Hunger is not uncommon in literature, particularly in the novels of the Victorian era. Both Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens, whose novels expose the harsh realities of life for neglected children, write about hungry children: the burnt porridge offered up at Lowood in Jane Eyre or the desperate Oliver Twist who courageously asks for more.
However, the child’s hunger is taken to a new level in J.G. Ballard’s 1984 novel Empire of the Sun. Loosely based on the author’s childhood experiences in war-time Shanghai, the novel was famously made into a film in 1987 directed by Steven Spielberg and starring a young Christian Bale.
Ballard was born in Shanghai in 1930 where his father, a chemist, worked as chairman and director of the Chinese subsidiary of a Manchester-based textile firm. When the Japanese occupied Shanghai during the second Sino-Japanese war (1937-45), Allied civilians – including Ballard, his parents and his younger sister – were interned.
Whilst these autobiographical experiences form the background of the story, Ballard made a number of changes, one of the most significant being the removal of the parents from the narrative at an early point. The boy protagonist Jim – the Ballard-figure – gets separated from his parents during the turmoil following a Japanese attack on British and US warships docked in Shanghai. The parents disappear – it transpires later that they are sent to a prison camp – whilst Jim is left to his own devices. The novel thus centres on Jim and becomes a story of wartime suffering and survival.
Many challenges face young Jim, not the least of which is food. There is little of it, and what there is, is often tasteless, insubstantial and monotonous. The reality of Jim’s war-time food experiences is brought into sharp relief when contrasted with the abundance of food available to him when his parents were still around.
When Jim returns to the family home – after being separated from his parents – he finds a plentiful supply of food: ‘the pantry cupboards were filled with tinned fruit, cocktail biscuits and pressed meats, delicacies that Jim adored.’ In these early days he can feast, and he does so whilst maintaining a semblance of normality: ‘He ate his meals at the dining-room table, sitting in his usual place’. When the food runs out Jim starts scavenging for food in the abandoned houses of the other members of the ex-pat community, keeping going on their supplies of ‘cocktail biscuits and soda water’.
As time goes by Jim grows increasingly hungry and desperate: he becomes dependent on the charity of Japanese soldiers who give him the scrapings of their cooking pot: ‘burnt rice and fish scales’. His hunger also takes on a hallucinatory quality. In one episode, when sitting by the waterfront, a ship – the Idzumo – is transformed into a wedding cake, its ‘funnels and masts … seemed carved from icing sugar’ and Jim imagines eating it: ‘He imagined himself nibbling the masts, sucking the cream from the Edwardian funnels, sinking his teeth into the marzipan bows and devouring the entire forward section of the hull. After that he would gobble down the Palace Hotel, the Shell Building, the whole of Shanghai…’
Shortly after this Jim meets two American sailors, Frank and Basie. Boarding their ship, and noticing a large cooking pot which is emitting an ‘intoxicating smell of burnt fat’ Jim is concerned that the men ‘might want to eat him.’ His fears are quickly allayed, however, when the lid is removed from the saucepan to reveal ‘a thick stew of rice and fish’ which Jim is invited to partake of.
Unfortunately, this encounter does not mark a happy ending to the novel – or an end to Jim’s hunger – but rather a reprieve. Capture and transportation to a prison camp swiftly follow, and hunger will return again and again until the war ends, and Jim is reunited with his parents.
To mark one of the occasional bright spots in Jim’s difficult experience, I made the American sailors’ fish stew: it’s hearty and warming and the fennel seeds add a little exotic touch. You can use whatever fish you like.
FISH STEW FOR A HUNGRY BOY
Ingredients (serves 4):
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion finely chopped
2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 tsp fennel seeds
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 leeks, thinly sliced
1 tin tomatoes (plus the equivalent in water)
500g fish fillets (salmon or white fish, skinned and cut into large chunks)
150g uncooked prawns
Salt and pepper to taste
Method:
Heat olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion and fennel seeds and garlic and cook over a medium heat for approximately five minutes until softened. Then add the leeks and potatoes and cook for another few minutes. Add the tinned tomatoes and water, and cook the vegetable mixture for 15-20 minutes until it has thickened and reduced slightly.
Add the fish and cook through for a couple of minutes.
Serve with rice.
