J. G. Ballard

Crash

"Harsh and ingenious! High Rise is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind." —Martin Amis, New Statesman When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on “enemy” floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.

High-Rise: A Novel

Martin Amis

A thrilling adventure with “an oppressive power reminiscent of Conrad” (Kingsley Amis), considered by many to be Ballard's finest.

The Drowned World

Empire of the Sun

A chilling novel that pays twisted homage to Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe'.

Robert Maitland, a 35 year-old architect, is driving home from his London offices when a blow-out sends his speeding Jaguar hurtling out of control. Smashing through a temporary barrier he finds himself, dazed and disorientated, on a traffic island below three converging motorways. But when he tries to climb the embankment or flag-down a passing car for help it proves impossible - and he finds himself imprisoned on the concrete island. Maitland must survive using only what he can find in his crashed car.


As in all Ballard's best work 'Concrete Island' provides an unnerving study of our modern lives and world. With his alienating, 'Ballardian' view of normal events, this is a unique novel from one of the twentieth century's finest writers.

Concrete Island

From the author of Crash and Cocaine Nights comes an unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control. Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on 'enemy' floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem. In this visionary tale of urban disillusionment society slips into a violent reverse as the isolated inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, create a dystopian world ruled by the laws of the jungle. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard's works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Iain Sinclair, Ali Smith, Neil Gaiman and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.

High-rise

The Crystal World

The utopian community of Eden-Olympia, an isolated and secure multi-national business park, features the lastest services and facilities for elite high-tech industries, until a doctor at its clinic goes on a suicidal shooting spree, revealing the dangerous psychological vents behind the park's placid surface. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

A Novel

Super-Cannes

Cocaine Nights.

An unemployed advertising executive investigates why the deranged man who shot his father in a shopping mall was released without being charged, in this novel from the late author of Empire of the Sun. 10,000 first printing.

Kingdom Come

Adult members of a West London community are brutally murdered, the children disappear, and Psychiatric Advisor Richard Greville investigates the baffling case

Running Wild

In this novel, an explosion at Heathrow takes the life of psychologist David Markham's ex-wife. In response, he infiltrates the antigovernment group responsible for the bombing--and begins to fall under its sway.--"Library Journal."

Millennium People

"A remarkable piece of invention, a flight from the world of the familiar and the real into the exotic universe of dream and desire." —New York Times Book Review 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 transformed. Vultures invade 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 toward an apocalyptic climax. In this characteristically inventive novel Ballard displays to devastating effect the extraordinary imagination that has established him as one of the twentieth century’s most visionary writers.

The Unlimited Dream Company: A Novel

The Wind from Nowhere

Ballard's genius for imagining exotic places appears again in Vermilion Sands where he creates a fantasy landscape of the future. These stories feature forgotten movie queens and guilt-ridden femmes fatales who exercise their every whim in a culture of unlimited technology.

Vermilion Sands

"This fable lifts a great freight of ideas effortlessly…The story of an expedition driven on by wishes of possession and power but guided internally by myths of America whose sources lie in the late 20th century." —Guardian Following the energy crisis of the late twentieth century, America has been abandoned. Now, a century later, a small group of European explorers returns to the now climatically mutated continent. But America is unrecognizable—the Bering Strait has been dammed and much of the country has become a desert, populated by isolated natives and the bizarre remnants of a disintegrated culture. The expedition sets off from Manhattan on a cross-country journey, through Holiday Inns and abandoned theme parks, to uncover a shocking new power in the heart of Las Vegas.

Hello America: A Novel

Collects all ninety-two of the late Empire of the Sun author's stories--including "Prima Belladonna," "Dead Time," and "The Index"-- which span five decades and explore everything from musical orchids to human cannibalism to the secret history of World War III.

The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard

The Drought: A Novel

In the haunting sequel to Empire of the Sun, Ballard puts his earlier account of a boy's experiences in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the context of a lifetime. After the war, Ballard returns to England where he eventually settles into suburban married life--until his wife's accidental death. "Piercingly honest".--Publishers Weekly.

The Kindness of Women

"[A] chilling . . . tale about humans who gamely follow their own worst instincts.”—Chicago Tribune 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.

J. G. Ballard

About

Books

Join the club