J. G. Ballard – författare

When London is lost beneath the rising tides, unconscious desires rush to the surface in this apocalyptic tale from the author of ‘Crash’ and ‘Empire of the Sun’, reissued here with an introduction from Martin Amis. All the way down the creek, perched in the windows of the office blocks and department stores, the iguanas watched them go past. London, 2145. The climate crisis has transformed the city into a primeval jungle, with rising tides and oppressive heat putting human life at risk. The streets are now swamps; lush tropical vegetation grows up the walls of the Ritz and reptiles are seen swimming through the newly-formed lagoons. Some flee the wasteland capital; others remain to pursue reckless schemes in the name of science and profit. As the world comes face to face with its future, how will humanity reckon with its ancient past?

Na r Crash publicerades 1973 vann romanen omedelbart la sarnas hja rtan och ma nga kritikers fo rakt. Vissa ansa g att den vittnade om en urartad sexualitet och vettlo sa perversioner, andra ansa g att den fa ngade hur teknologi kunde fo rvandla ma nskligt bega r och leda det i ova ntade riktningar. La saren mo ter James Ballard, hans fru Catherine och Robert Vaughan som med bilkrascher besatt utforskar sexualitetens gra nser genom fo rsto relsens befriande va ld och sma rta. En roman om relationen mellan destruktion och teknologi. Idag lika aktuell som na r den skrevs.

From the author of ‘Crash’ and ‘Cocaine Nights’ comes an unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control. 'Living in high-rises required a special type of behavior, one that was acquiescent, restrained, even perhaps slightly mad. A psychotic would have a ball here.' Welcome to the high-rise, a brand-new way of living designed for a modern world. Stretching forty floors into the sky, residents have everything they could wish for – from the brash filmmaker at the bottom to the lauded architect himself at the top. But when modern man of medicine Dr Robert Laing moves in, his grip on reason is soon tested to breaking point. As the foundations of civilisation itself begin to crumble, cocktail parties give way to brutal raids and once-luxurious amenities become arenas for violence in this unsettling orgy of barbarity and primal chaos.

‘Snort up “Cocaine Nights”. It’s disorientating, deranging and knocks the work of other avant-garde writers into a hatted cock’ Will Self 'One needs a great deal of idle time to feel really sorry for oneself.' Nothing is as it seems in the sun-soaked Spanish paradise of Estrella de Mar. When a mysterious house fire disrupts the serenity of this exclusive enclave for retired, rich Brits, Charles Prentice finds himself investigating a murder – to which his brother has already confessed. As he begins to scratch at the perfect veneer of this playground for the privileged, Charles is sent down a sinister spiral of his own, to uncover a dark world of adultery, drugs and violent crime bubbling underneath.

The second in a two volume collection of short stories by the acclaimed author of ‘Empire of the Sun’, ‘Crash’ and ‘Super-Cannes’. The new edition is introduced by Adam Thirwell.With eighteen novels over four decades – from ‘The Drowned World’ in 1962 to his final novel ‘Kingdom Come’ in 2006 – J.G. Ballard is known as one of Britain’s most celebrated and original novelists.However, during his long career he was also a prolific writer of short stories; in fact, many people consider that he is at his best in the short-story format. These highly influential stories have appeared in magazines such as New Worlds, Amazing Stories and Interzone, and in several separate collections, including ‘The Terminal Beach’, ‘The Venus Hunters’, ‘Vermilion Sands’, ‘Low-Flying Aircraft’ and ‘Myths of the Near Future’.Set out in the original order of publication and frequently the point of conception for ideas he further developed in his novels, these stories provide an unprecedented opportunity to see the imagination of one of Britain’s greatest writers at work. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Robert Macfarlane, Iain Sinclair, James Lever and Ali Smith) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.

Coming in March 2016 from acclaimed director Ben Wheatley, a major motion picture adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s compelling and unnerving tale of what happens when life in a luxury apartment building descends into chaos, starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans and Elisabeth Moss.‘Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.’Within the walls of a high-tech forty-storey high-rise, the residents are hell-bent on an orgy of sex and destruction, answering to primal urges that their utopian surroundings can’t satisfy. The high-rise is a would-be paradise turned dystopia, ruled by intimidation and violence, and, as the residents organize themselves for war, floor against floor, no one wants it to stop …

"Skändlighetsutställningen är en djup och oroande bok. Sexualitetens icke-sexuella rötter undersöks med kirurgisk precision. En bilolycka kan vara mer sexuellt upphetsande än en pornografisk bild. [ ] Den här boken rör vid sexuella avgrunder som den hårdaste illustrerade pornografi inte kan nå." Ur William S Burroughs förord "Talbots såriga händer lyfte hennes bröst, som om han vägde deras

A prophetic and experimental masterpiece by J. G. Ballard, the acclaimed author of ‘Crash’ and ‘Super-Cannes’, featuring an introduction by Hari Kunzru. The human organism is an atrocity exhibition at which he is an unwilling spectator … As the protagonist spirals into the depths of a nervous breakdown, his dreams are haunted by images of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, astronauts and car-crash victims. A kaleidoscopic scrapbook of mass culture, his mind fixates on the consumerism of the modern world – a hallucinatory obsession with celebrity, media, sex and violence. With the media infiltrating every corner of our psyche, have the lines blurred between fiction and reality?

Kartotek 4: Jane Bennett – System och ting: Vital materialism och objektorienterad filosofi. J.G. Ballard – Prima Belladonna. Förord av Jesper Olsson. Tanken bakom skriftserien Kartotek är att lyfta fram viktiga teoretiska texter för en nordisk läsekrets i ett format som uppmuntrar till dialog mellan filosofi, teoretiskt tänkande, skönlitteratur och konst, samt inbjuder till vidare fördjupning. Varje del av skriftserien består var för sig av två texter, en teoretisk eller essäistisk text ackompanjerad av en skönlitterär text. Materiellt påminner varje del i skriftserien om små pamfletter, tryckta på enkelt papper, klammerhäftade, lätta att ta med på bussen tåget eller flyget, och menade att distribueras mellan vänner och kollegor.

‘This is autobiography taken to the highest reaches of fiction, another wonderful novel of scorching power, shot through with honesty and lyricism’ ObserverThe Kindness of Women continues the story of Jim, the young boy whose experiences in Japanese-occupied Shanghai were described in Empire of the Sun. It follows his return to post-war England, setting his childhood in the context of a lifetime.Jim tries, and fails, to find stability as a medical student at Cambridge, then as a trainee RAF pilot in Canada. Having finally settled into happy family life, his world is ripped apart by domestic tragedy. He plunges into the maelstrom of the 1960s, an instigator and subject of every aspect of cultural, social and sexual revolution.We follow, in all this, the progress of a bruised mind as it tries to make sense of the upheaval around it. Turning conspicuously, as in Empire of the Sun, to the events of his own life, Ballard makes of experience fiction that is frankly startling and, at its most tender, powerfully moving.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Ali Smith, Iain Sinclair, Martin Amis and Ned Beauman) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.

J. G. Ballard – author of ‘Crash’ – explores the extremes of ecology and feminism in this highly acclaimed modern fable. Newly reissued with an introduction by Rivka Galchen.Dr Barbara Rafferty is a fearless conservationist, determined to save a rare albatross from extinction. Her crusade gains widespread coverage when earnest young environmentalist Neil Dempsey is shot and wounded.Support for the conservationists grows and well-wishers flock to the island, bringing with them specimens of other endangered creatures to be protected by Dr Barbara and her crew. The island seems a new Eden.But is Dr Barbara as altruistic as she appears? Why are the islanders committing acts of self-sabotage? And what’s keeping Neil alive while the other men sicken?A classic exploration of the extremes of human behaviour from J.G Ballard, this is a brilliantly unsettling novel in which all preconceptions are overthrown.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Robert Macfarlane, Martin Amis, James Lever and Ali Smith) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.

J.G.Ballard is the author of the novels "Crash", "Empire of the Sun" and "Rushing to Paradise". Throughout his career he has also been a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers. This book collects together pieces of his journalism, grouped under themes including science and film.

A high-tech business park on the Mediterranean is the setting for a most disturbing crime in this reissue featuring an introduction by Ali Smith. People are so immersed in their work they wouldn’t notice the end of the world. A high-tech business park lies hidden in the hills above Cannes – an ultra-modern utopia where residents live a life of luxury and seclusion.But when Jane Sinclair arrives in Eden-Olympia for a new medical post, a disturbing mystery awaits. What caused her apparently sane predecessor to murder ten people in a shooting spree that made headlines around the world? As her husband Paul explores his new surroundings, he begins to uncover a thriving subculture of crime that is spiralling out of control.Both novel of ideas and complex thriller, Super-Cannes is an extraordinary satire from the author of ‘Empire of the Sun’, ‘The Drowned World’ and ‘Crash’.

Violent rebellion comes to London’s middle classes. Like every obedient professional, I arrived punctually for my appointment with a revolution. When a bomb explosion at Heathrow airport kills psychologist David Markham’s ex-wife, he sets out on a journey to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death. As he infiltrates a shadowy group of middle-class revolutionaries based in the comfortable Chelsea Marina, Markham soon finds himself swept up in a bourgeois insurrection that is sending the capital into panic.

The classic, heartrending story of a British boy’s four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Newly reissued with an introduction by John Lanchester.Based on J. G. Ballard’s own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy’s life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai – a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.Rooted as it is in the author’s own disturbing experience of war in our time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the twentieth century will be not only remembered but judged.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Zadie Smith, Rivka Galchen, Hari Kunzru and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.

‘Classic Ballard. Mesmerising. No one writes with such haunting impact’ William BoydIn parched, war-torn central Africa, Dr Mallory watches his clinic fail and dreams of discovering a third Nile to make the Sahara bloom. During his search for water, an ancient tree stump is uprooted by a bulldozer and water wells up, spreading until it becomes an enormous river. With the once arid land now abounding in birds and beasts, the obsessed Mallory forges up-river in an old car ferry, clashing with hostile factions as he tries to find the source of his own creation.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Ali Smith, Iain Sinclair, Martin Amis and Ned Beauman) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.

‘Anticipates today’s Britain with eerie precision’ GuardianWith a new introduction by Deborah Levy and a striking new cover design by the artist Stanley Donwood, Ballard’s final novel sees consumerism evolve into something even more sinister.A gunman opens fire in a shopping mall. Not a terrorist, apparently, but a madman with a rifle. Or not, as he is mysteriously (and quickly) set free without charge.One of the victims is the father of Richard Pearson, unemployed advertising executive and life-long rebel. Now he is driving out to Brooklands, the apparently peaceful town on the M25 which has at its heart the very shiny shoppers’ paradise where the shooting happened – the Metro-Centre.Then the main suspect is released – thanks to the testimony of self-styled pillars of the community like the doctor who treated Richard’s father on his deathbed. Richard, determined to unravel the mystery, starts to believe that something deeply sinister lurks behind the pristine facades of the labyrinthine mall, its 24-hour cable TV and sports club…

The definitive cult, post-modern novel – a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism – reissued with an introduction from Zadie Smith. After being bombarded endlessly by road-safety propaganda it was almost a relief to find myself in an actual accident. When James Ballard smashes his car into another, he becomes fascinated with the allure of violence. His new friend Dr Robert Vaughan – a charismatic figure with a dubious sense of morality – leads him to a transgressive underworld of desire, where the collision of modernity and sex are pushed to the extremes. In a society ruled by mass-media and technological advancements, are there any limits to humanity’s obsessions?

A terrifying vision of the future from one of the twentieth century’s most renowned writers – J. G. Ballard, author of ‘Empire of the Sun’ and ‘Crash’.Following the energy crisis of the late twentieth-century America has been abandoned. Now, a century later, an expedition from Europe returns to the deserted continent. But America is unrecognisable – the Bering Strait has been dammed and the whole continent 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-continent journey, through Holiday Inns and abandoned theme parks. They will uncover a shocking new power in the heart of Las Vegas in this unique vision of our world transformed.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Ned Beauman, Ali Smith, Neil Gaiman and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.

A chilling novel that pays twisted homage to Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Newly reissued with an introduction from Neil Gaiman.Robert Maitland, a 35 year-old architect, is driving home from his London offices when a blow-out sends his speeding Jaguar hurtling out of control. Smashing through a temporary barrier he finds himself, dazed and disorientated, on a traffic island below three converging motorways. But when he tries to climb the embankment or flag-down a passing car for help it proves impossible – and he finds himself imprisoned on the concrete island. Maitland must survive using only what he can find in his crashed car.As in all Ballard’s best work ‘Concrete Island’ provides an unnerving study of our modern lives and world. With his alienating, ‘Ballardian’ view of normal events, this is a unique novel from one of the twentieth century’s finest writers.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Zadie Smith, Adam Philips, Adam Thirlwell and Robert Macfarlane) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.

A startling and at times unsettlingly prescient collection of J. G. Ballard’s greatest interviews.J.G. Ballard was a literary giant. Best known for his controversial bestseller ‘Crash’ and the memoir ‘Empire of the Sun’, he was a writer of unique talent – always surprising, frequently prescient.Such acuity was not exclusive to his novels and, as this book reminds us, Ballard’s restive intelligence sharpened itself in dialogue. He entertained many with insights into the world as he saw it, and speculated, often correctly, about its future. Some of these observations earned Ballard an oracular reputation, and continue to yield an uncannily accurate commentary today.‘Extreme Metaphors’ collects the finest interviews of his career. Conversations with Will Self, Jon Savage, Iain Sinclair and John Gray, and collaborators like David Cronenberg, are a reminder of his wit and humanity, testament to Ballard’s profound worldliness as much as his otherworldly imagination. This collection is an indispensable tribute to one of recent history’s most original thinkers.

A FUTURISTIC COVER - COMES WITH 3D GLASSES!Welcome to Vermilion Sands, the fully automated desert-resort ready to fulfil your most exotic whims. Home to the idle rich it now languishes in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world. Discover prima donna plants programmed to sing operatic arias, dial-a-poem computers and psychosensitive houses capable of murder. These quintessentially Ballardian short stories of dystopian modernity are Ballard’s ‘guess at what the future will actually be like’.

J. G. Ballard's collected nonfiction from 1962 to 2007, mapping the cultural obsessions, experiences, and insights of one of the most original minds of his generation. J. G. Ballard was a colossal figure in English literature and an imaginative force of the twentieth century. Alongside seminal novels from the notorious Crash (1973) to the semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun (1984) Ballard was a sought-after reviewer and commentator, publishing journalism, memoir, and cultural criticism in a variety of forms. This volume collects the most significant short nonfiction of Ballard's fifty-year career, extending the range of the only previous collection of his nonfiction, A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996), which selected essays and reviews published between 1962 and 1995. A decade on from Ballard's death in 2009, a new generation of readers needs a new collection. In the period following A User's Guide, Ballard's writing addressed 9/11, British politics from New Labour onward, and what he termed the rise of soft fascism a diagnosis that maintains its relevance amid a shift toward right populism in European and US politics. Beautifully edited by Ballard scholar and novelist Mark Blacklock, this volume includes Ballard's editorials and manifestos; commentaries on his own work; commentaries on the work of others; reviews; and more. Above all, it makes the case for the currency of Ballard's work at a contemporary juncture at which so many of his diagnoses concerning the media and politics have become apparent.

From J. G. Ballard, author of ‘Crash’ and ‘Cocaine Nights’ comes his extraordinary vision of an African forest that turns all in its path to crystal.Through a ‘leaking’ of time, the West African jungle starts to crystallize. Trees metamorphose into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses. Most flee the area in terror, afraid to face a catastrophe they cannot understand.But some, dazzled and strangely entranced, remain to drift through this dreamworld forest: a doctor in pursuit of his ex-mistress, an enigmatic Jesuit wielding a crystal cross and a tribe of lepers searching for Paradise.In this tour de force of the imagination, Ballard transports the reader into one of his most unforgettable landscapes.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including James Lever, Ali Smith, Hari Kunzru and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.

With a new introduction by John Gray and striking new cover from the artist Stanley Donwood, the author of ‘Cocaine Nights’ brings you the story of suburban London transformed into an exotic dreamworld.When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is surreally transformed. Vultures invade the rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man’s urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations towards an apocalyptic climax.In this characteristically inventive novel Ballard displays to devastating effect the extraordinary imagination that established him as one of Britain’s most highly acclaimed writers.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Ali Smith, Iain Sinclair, Martin Amis and Ned Beauman) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.