J. Ballard - Empire of the Sun

Ballard’s very first stories, ‘Prima Belladonna’ and ‘Escapement’, were published in Science Fantasy and New Worlds back in 1956. This volume offers an unparalleled chance to explore his complete shorter oeuvre and marvel at both his development as a writer and his mastery of the form.

Ballard’s controversial cult novel, subsequently made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg, was originally published in 1973 but it has lost none of its potency. Vaughan, a TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the highways, craves the ultimate erotic atrocity: a union of blood, semen and engine fluid in a head-on smash with Elizabeth Taylor.

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 mayhem. In Ballard’s visionary novel, 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.

While searching for the truth behind the Heathrow bomb that killed his ex-wife, psychologist David Markham infiltrates a shadowy protest group based in the comfortable enclave of Chelsea Marina. He finds that these middle-class revolutionaries are intent on destroying everything they’ve worked so hard for: blowing up the National Film Theatre, no less, burning their books, defaulting on their maintenance charges and staging a great Bonfire of the Volvos. Part cultural analysis and part surreal social prediction, this gripping late novel finds Ballard still at the height of his creative powers.

The Singapore Grip

J.G. Farrell

The Railway Man

Eric Lomax

Wild Swans

Jung Chang

Bridge on the River Kwai

Pierre Boulle

The Cement Garden

Ian McEwan

Heaven’s Edge

Romesh Gunesekera

Lord of the Flies

William Golding

With a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, and starring a young Christian Bale as Jim, Steven Spielberg’s 1987 adaptation has the grace and grandeur of a David Lean epic and, perhaps more importantly, the author’s wholehearted seal of approval.

Described by Ballard himself as resembling ‘a dream-like newsreel filmed by a secret camera deep in the emperor’s bunker’ and as a film that ‘brilliantly sums up all the dilemmas that surround war and peace’ Alexander Sokurov’s film offers a remarkable portrait of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito and compellingly details the closing events of the war in Asia.

www.jgballard.com

J.G. BALLARD was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China, where his father was a businessman. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ballard and his family were placed in a civilian prison camp. They returned to England in 1946. After two years at Cambridge, where he read medicine, Ballard worked as a copywriter and Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF. He started writing short stories in the late 1950s, while working on a scientific journal. His first major novel, The Drowned World, was published in 1962. His acclaimed novels include The Crystal World, The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash (filmed by David Cronenberg), High-Rise, The Unlimited Dream Company, The Kindness of Women (the sequel to Empire of the Sun), Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes and, most recently, Millennium People.

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The Drowned World

The Voices of Time

The Terminal Beach

The Drought

The Crystal World

The Day of Forever

The Venus Hunters

The Disaster Area

The Atrocity Exhibition

Vermilion Sands

Crash

Concrete Island

High-Rise

Low-Flying Aircraft

The Unlimited Dream Company

Hello America

Myths of the Near Future

Empire of the Sun

The Day of Creation

Running Wild

War Fever

The Kindness of Women

Rushing to Paradise

A User’s Guide to the Millennium (non-fiction)

Cocaine Nights

Super-Cannes

The Complete Short Stories

Millennium People

Harper Perennial

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This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006

EIGHTH EDITION

Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1994

First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz Ltd 1984

Copyright © J.G. Ballard 1984

PS Section copyright © Travis Elborough 2006, except

‘The End of My War’ by J.G. Ballard © J.G. Ballard 1995

PS ™is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

J.G. Ballard asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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