Showing results by author "J. G. Ballard" in All Categories

The definitive cult, post-modern novel - a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism. When our narrator smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, his sense of sexual possibilities in the world around him becomes detached. As he begins an affair with the dead man's wife, he finds himself drawn, with increasing intensity, to the mangled impacts of car crashes.

A violent novel filled with insidious twists, Kingdom Come follows the exploits of Richard Pearson, a rebellious, unemployed advertising executive, whose father is gunned down by a deranged mental patient in a vast shopping mall outside Heathrow Airport.

The heartrending story of a British boy's four-year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on J. G. Ballard's own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai - a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.

Water. Man’s most precious commodity is a luxury of the past. Radioactive waste from years of industrial dumping has caused the sea to form a protective skin strong enough to devastate the Earth it once sustained. And while the remorseless sun beats down on the dying land, civilisation itself begins to crack. Violence erupts and insanity reigns as the remnants of mankind struggle for survival in a worldwide desert of despair.

A collection of the author's articles and reviews, giving an insight into some of the most important literary, artistic, and scientific movements and events of the last 30 years.

An unforgettable voyage of the imagination from the bestselling author of Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes. In parched Port-la-Nouvelle in central Africa, Dr Mallory watches his clinic fail as constant warfare between a ragged band of guerrillas and the local chief of police causes the tribal residents to flee. In this drought-plagued and poverty-ridden country he dreams of discovering a third Nile tributary to make the Sahara bloom.

Led by a charismatic and slightly unhinged woman, a group of environmentalists wrest control over a small South Pacific island in hopes of cultivating it into their own private Eden. But paradise is not quite what it seems in this “searing” (Kirkus Reviews) send-up of environmentalism, feminism, and extremism of all sorts.

Violent rebellion comes to London’s middle classes in the extraordinary new novel from the author of Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes. When a bomb explodes at Heathrow, it looks like just another random act of violence to psychologist David Markham. But when he discovers that his ex-wife is among the victims he is compelled to further investigate the mysterious and shocking circumstances surrounding her death.

An anthology of exceptional Science Fiction short stories. Volume 4: The Earth is a non-renewable resource, overpopulation is problematic, when only the war machines are left. Stories include "The Dwindling Sphere" by Willard Hawkins, "Billennium" by J. G. Ballard, and "Rust" by Joseph E. Kelleam.

The fascinating, and largely autobiographical, sequel to J. G. Ballard’s prize-winning Empire of the Sun, that follows Jim to post-war England. The Kindness of Women continues the story of the boy whose life in Japanese-occupied Shaghai was described so memorably in Empire of the Sun, it sets those traumatic events within the context of a lifetime as we follow the narrator, Jim, to England and suburban Shepperton after the war.

J. G. Ballard - author of Crash and Empire of the Sun - explores the extremes of ecology and feminism in this highly acclaimed modern fable. Dr Barbara Rafferty is a fearless conservationist, determined to save a rare albatross from extinction. Her crusade gains widespread coverage when earnest young environmentalist Neil Dempsey is shot during an ill-fated attempt to rescue the bird from its Pacific island habitat, Saint-Esprit.

J. G. Ballard was, for over 50 years, one of this country’s most significant writers. Beginning with the events that inspired his classic novel, Empire of the Sun, in this revelatory autobiography he charts the course of his astonishing life. Miracles of Life takes us from the vibrant surroundings of pre-war Shanghai, to the deprivations and unexpected freedoms of Lunghua Camp, to Ballard’s arrival in a devastated Britain.

When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is surreally transformed into a reality more akin to a dreamscape. Vultures invade the rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man’s urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations towards an apocalyptic climax.

A high-security luxury housing estate in the Thames Valley is the setting for a disturbing outbreak of violence in this compelling novella from the acclaimed author of ‘Cocaine Nights’ and ‘Super-Cannes’. Pangbourne Village housing estate is exclusive, expensive and protected from the outside world by the very latest in security systems. It should be the perfect place to bring up a child.

Miracles of Life opens and closes in Shanghai, the city where J. G.Ballard was born, and where he spent the most of the Second World War interned with his family in a Japanese concentration camp.