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Find Out More
www.ballardian.com
A comprehensive website for all things Ballardian, including links to interviews, reviews and much more.
www.jgballard.com
An excellent site for those harder to find articles and features of J.G. Ballard.
About the Author
J.G. BALLARD was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. He and his family were interned in a civilian prison camp, following their release they returned to England in 1946. After reading medicine at Cambridge for two years, he worked as a copywriter and Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF. The Drowned World, published in 1962, was his first major novel. His acclaimed novels include The Crystal World, The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash (filmed by David Cronenberg), High-Rise, Empire of the Sun (filmed by Steven Spielberg), The Kindness of Women, Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes, Millennium People and Kingdom Come. Ballard’s most recent work is his autobiography Miracles of Life, published in 2008.
Praise
From the reviews of The Unlimited Dream Company:
‘A remarkable piece of invention, a flight from the world of the familiar and the real into the exotic universe of dream and desire … dense and erotic and magical, a pleasure to read’
MALCOLM BRADBURY, New York Times Book Review
‘A remarkable fantasist … rich, seductive … Ballard’s eloquence is as lush as the flowering vines he hangs from his multi-storey garages’
Observer
‘I was completely beguiled … Worked out with Ballard’s mastery, it is the most cunning evocation of a dream world’
Daily Telegraph
‘The idea is blindingly original and yet as basic as a dream of the whole human race. Moving, thrilling, exquisitely written’
ANTHONY BURGESS
‘Ballard is one of the few genuine surrealists in business … At its most heightened, Ballard’s prose is an impacted mass of images, dense and iridescent as mercury, stranger, you might say, than fiction’
Guardian
‘An extraordinary and touching piece of surrealism … [a] strange and beautiful extravaganza’
Glasgow Herald
‘Extraordinary … there is no doubt of the intensity and originality of the imagination that conceived the scenes of Shepperton transformed into a paradise … far beyond the scope of most novelists’
Spectator
‘One of the most startling and original novelists. Extremely witty, Ballard’s most optimistic book contains some of his strongest, most vivid prose … exuberant fantasy’
Time Out
By the same author
The Drowned World
The Voices of Time
The Terminal Beach
The Drought
The Crystal World
The Day of Forever
The Disaster Area
The Atrocity Exhibition
Vermilion Sands
Crash
Concrete Island
High-Rise
Low-Flying Aircraft
The Venus Hunters
Hello America
Myths of the Near Future
Empire of the Sun
The Day of Creation
Running Wild
War Fever
Rushing to Paradise
A User’s Guide to the Millennium (non-fiction)
Cocaine Nights
Super-Cannes
The Complete Short Stories
Kingdom Come
Miracles of Life
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1992, and as a Flamingo Modern Classic 2000
First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd 1979
Copyright © J. G. Ballard 1979
PS Section interview copyright © Vanora Bennett 2004
PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers 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
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007374885
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