Concrete Island

J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His most recent novel is Kingdom Come, published in 2006, his autobiography Miracles of Life was published in 2008 to much acclaim. J.G. Ballard died in 2009.

'This allegory of modern life is both compelling and profound.' Daily Telegraph 'Ballard's violent exact prose carries you along irresistibly. You believe him, you accept his vision, and it is a fearful one.' Sunday Telegraph 'Ballard writes with taut and precise economy, and the moral of his brilliantly original fable is plain: the interstices of our concrete jungle are filled with neglected people, and one day those people could be ourselves.' Sunday Times Praise for J G Ballard: 'A work of very powerful originality. Ballard is amongst our finest writers of fiction.' Anthony Burgess 'One of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced, the possessor of a terrifying and exhilarating imagination.' Guardian 'Ballard has issued a series of bulletins on the modern world of almost unerring prescience. Other writers describe; Ballard anticipates.' Will Self 'Britain's number one living novelist.' John Sutherland, Sunday Times