A selection of J.G. Ballard’s other books
The Complete Short Stories, Volumes I and II
For over four decades, J.G. Ballard has been one of Britain’s most celebrated novelists, but from the beginning he has been equally admired for his distinctive and highly influential short stories, the first of which – ‘Prima Belladonna’ and ‘Escapement’ – appeared in print in 1956. Arranged in order of publication and presented in two volumes, The Complete Short Stories provides an unprecedented opportunity to review the career of one of Britain’s greatest writers.
The Atrocity Exhibition
The irrational, all-pervading violence of the modern world is the subject of this extraordinary tour de force. The central character’s dreams are haunted by images of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, dead astronauts and car-crash victims as he traverses the screaming wastes of nervous breakdown. Seeking his sanity, he casts himself in a number of roles: H-bomber pilot, presidential assassin, crash victim, psychopath. Finally, through the black, perverse magic of violence he transcends his psychic turmoil to find the key to a bizarre new sexuality.
High-Rise
Within the 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 technological mayhem. In this classic visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as the inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, recreate a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.
The Day of Creation
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 to make the Sahara bloom. During his search an ancient tree stump is accidentally uprooted and water wells up, spreading until it becomes an enormous river. Naming it after himself, Mallory becomes obsessed with his creation, but almost as soon as he has discovered it he resolves to destroy it. With the once arid land now abounding in birds and beasts, he forges upriver in an old car ferry, clashing with hostile factions in a dangerous quest to find the source of his own creation.
Cocaine Nights
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 civilized, 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.
Millennium People
When a bomb goes off at Heathrow it looks like just another random act of violence to psychologist David Markham. But then he discovers that his ex-wife Laura is among the victims. Acting on police suspicions, he starts to investigate London’s fringe protest movements, falling in with a shadowy group based in the comfortable Thameside estate of Chelsea Marina. Led by a charismatic doctor, the group aims to rouse the docile middle classes to anger and violence, to free them from both the self-imposed burdens of civic responsibility and the trappings of a consumer society. Soon Markham is swept up in a campaign that spirals rapidly out of control. Every certainty in his life is questioned as the cornerstones of middle England become targets and growing panic grips the capital.
Kingdom Come
When the father of Richard Pearson, unemployed advertising executive and lifelong rebel, is fatally wounded as a deranged mental patient opens fire on a crowd of shoppers at the Metro-Centre, Richard suspects that there is more to his father’s death than meets the eye – especially when the main suspect is released without charge thanks to the dubious testimony of self-styled pillars of the community, including Julia Goodwin, the doctor who treated his father on his deathbed. Determined to unravel the mystery, Richard soon realises that the Metro-Centre, with its round-the-clock cable channel and sports clubs, lies at the very heart of his father’s death. Consumerism rules the lives of everyone in the motorway towns and feeds the cravings of this bored community with its desperate need for something new, whatever the cost… ♦
Lullaby
Chuck Palahniuk
Glamorama
Bret Easton Ellis
Cosmopolis
Don DeLillo