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Most Popular Books by J. G. Ballard

J. G. Ballard is the author of Crash (2001), Concrete Island (2018), High-Rise: A Novel (2012), The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard (1995), Cocaine Nights (2010).

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Crash

release date: Oct 05, 2001
Crash
In this hallucinatory novel, an automobile provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways," experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister than the last. James Ballard, his friend and fellow obsessive, tells the story of this twisted visionary as he careens rapidly toward his own demise in an internationally orchestrated car crash with Elizabeth Taylor. A classic work of cutting-edge fiction, Crash explores both the disturbing implications and horrific possibilities of contemporary society''s increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.

Concrete Island

release date: Jun 12, 2018
Concrete Island
Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Ã1973.

High-Rise: A Novel

release date: Apr 16, 2012
High-Rise: A Novel
Class war erupts in a luxurious high-rise apartment building.

The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard

release date: Mar 15, 1995
The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard
The stories in this collection explore the human psyche and its relationship to nature and technology.

Cocaine Nights

release date: Jan 05, 2010
Cocaine Nights
From the iconic author of Crash and Empire of the Sun, Cocaine Nights features a man who finds himself drawn into a network of drugs, pornography, and murder in a Spanish resort. The remarkable bestseller from one of the giants of modern British literature--at once an engrossing mystery and an unnerving vision of a society coming to terms with a life of unlimited leisure. When Charles Prentice arrives in Spain to investigate his brother''s involvement in the death of five people in a fire in the upmarket coastal resort of Estrella de Mar, he gradually discovers that beneath the civilised, cultured surface of this exclusive enclave for Britain''s retired rich there flourishes a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex . What starts as an engrossing mystery develops into a mesmerising novel of ideas--a dazzling work of the imagination from one of Britain''s most original and controversial novelists.

Empire of the Sun

release date: Mar 07, 2005
Empire of the Sun
Jim, an eleven-year-old British schoolboy living in Shanghai in 1941, must learn to survive on his own when he is separated from his parents and sent to a Japanese prison camp

The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard

release date: Apr 25, 2025
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
Named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle A collection of 98 enthralling and pulse-quickening stories, spanning five decades, venerates the remarkable imagination of J. G. Ballard. With a body of work unparalleled in twentieth-century literature, J. G. Ballard is recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic writers in the world. With the much-hailed release of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard, readers now have a means to celebrate the unmatched range and mesmerizing cadences of a literary genius. Whether writing about musical orchids, human cannibalism, or the secret history of World War III, Ballard''s Complete Stories evokes the hallucinations of Kafka and Borges in its ability to render modern paranoia and fantastical creations on the page. Includes the story "The Garden of Time," the inspiration for the 2024 Met Gala Dress code.

Super-Cannes

release date: Oct 05, 2001
Super-Cannes
"... one day Dr. Greenwood from Eden-Olympia''s clinic goes on a suicidal shooting spree. Dr. Jane Sinclair is hired as his replacement, and she and her husband, Paul, are given Dr. Greenwood''s house as a residence. Unable to work while recovering from an accident, Paul spends his days taking a close look at the house ... He discovers clues in the house that lead him to question Eden-Olympia''s official account of the killings."--Jacket.

Hello America: A Novel

release date: May 20, 2013
Hello America: A Novel
"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.

J. G. Ballard, the First Twenty Years

The Kindness of Women

release date: Jul 15, 2014
The Kindness of Women
In The Kindness of Women, a sequel to his award-winning Empire of the Sun, young James returns to England at the end of World War II. He stumbles through medical study at Cambridge, trains briefly as an RAF pilot in Canada, and marries. When his wife dies suddenly, Jim is thrust into the violence and sexual promiscuity of the sixties. Penetrating and wise, J. G. Ballard''s biting social commentary and pushing of boundaries make this semi-autobiographical novel a small classic.

The Day of Creation

release date: Jan 01, 2012
The Day of Creation
"As Dr. Mallory watches his clinic fail on the parched terrain of central Africa, he dreams of discovering a third Nile that will make the Sahara bloom. When there is a trickle on the local airstrip, and soon a river, the obsessed Mallory claims it as his own creation. Joined by Noon, a silent adolscent girl who as a child ran with the local guerrillas; Professor Sanger, a documentary filmmaker with a fading reputation; and Nora Warrer, the widow of a Rhodesian veterinary surgeon, the remains of whose menagerie flourish exotically amid the land''s new fertility, Mallory sets out for the river''s source."--Dust jacket.

Running Wild

release date: Jul 03, 2018
Running Wild
Yet again J. G. Ballard’s inimitable clairvoyance is on display in this timely, powerful story of a community shattered by a massive act of violence. A massacre rocks a suburban utopia—thirty-two adults murdered, and their children missing—in Running Wild, one of Ballard’s most dazzlingly subversive works of fiction. “To Ballard, lack of choice . . . is a dangerous state of being. In Running Wild, it’s not the children who are doing the running; it is the society that raised them” (San Francisco Chronicle).

Rushing to Paradise

release date: Apr 15, 1996
Rushing to Paradise
The rise and fall of a cult leader. After losing her medical license, Dr. Barbara Rafferty turns environmentalist to protest French nuclear testing in the Pacific. The campaign attracts media attention, money flows and she sets up a commune on an atoll, an experiment which ends in bloodshed

Kingdom Come: A Novel

release date: Mar 05, 2012
Kingdom Come: A Novel
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Fiction) “J.G. Ballard is the undisputed laureate of suburban psychosis.... A brilliant novel.” —Literary Review 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. When the prime suspect is released without charge, Richard’s suspicions are aroused. Investigating the mystery, Richard uncovers at the Metro-Centre mall a neo-fascist world whose charismatic spokesperson is whipping up the masses into a state of unsustainable frenzy. Riots frequently terrorize the complex, immigrant communities are attacked by hooligans, and sports events mushroom into jingoistic political rallies. In this gripping, dystopian tour de force, J.G. Ballard holds up a mirror to suburban mind rot, revealing the darker forces at work beneath the gloss of consumerism and flag-waving patriotism.

J.G. Ballard

J.G. Ballard
Controversial science fiction writer, J.G. Ballard, tells of his unorthodox upbringing in Shanghai in the 1940''s. Ballard has achieved acclaim for works such as Empire of the Sun, and controversy over Crash, which investigates the psychosexual significance of the car crash. The book includes an article on Ballard Mythmaker of the 20th Century by William S. Burroughs, and chapter one of Crash, plus Ballard''s introduction to the French edition.
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