J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai. 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 controversial novel ‘Crash’ was made into a film by David Cronenberg. His autobiography ‘Miracles of Life’ was published in 2008, and a collection of interviews with the author, ‘Extreme Metaphors’, was published in 2012. J. G. Ballard passed away in 2009.

'Unsettling and subversive ... terrifically good' Sunday Times 'Terrifying and strangely haunting ... A riveting work from a writer of rare imaginative largesse, a bearer of bad tidings, unforgettably told' Daily Telegraph 'Wonderfully warped, blackly comic ... written with Ballard's customary panache, its potent mix of sex, violence and radicalism will keep his fans happy' Economist 'Ballard's instinct for the future is unnerving ... Very few writers possess this kind of intelligence: to use it with such wit is almost criminal' Independent on Sunday 'The terrifying thing about Ballard is his logic; is this science fiction or history written ahead of its time?' Len Deighton