Volume 55, Number 15 · October 9, 2008
J.G. Ballard: The Glow of the Prophet
By Diane Johnson
Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, An Autobiography
by J.G. Ballard
London: Fourth Estate, 278 pp., £14.99
OTHER BOOKS BY J.G. BALLARD DISCUSSED IN THIS REVIEW
The Atrocity Exhibition
by J.G. Ballard
Flamingo, 192 pp. (out of print)
Crash
by J.G. Ballard
Picador, 224 pp., $13.00 (paper)
Concrete Island
by J.G. Ballard
Picador, 180 pp., $13.00 (paper)
Empire of the Sun
by J.G. Ballard
Simon and Schuster, 288 pp., $13.00 (paper)
The Day of Creation
by J.G. Ballard
Picador, 256 pp., $13.00 (paper)
Running Wild
by J.G. Ballard
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 112 pp., $12.00 (paper)
The Kindness of Women
by J.G. Ballard
Picador, 352 pp., $15.00 (paper)
Cocaine Nights
by J.G. Ballard
Counterpoint, 336 pp., $16.00 (paper)
Super-Cannes
by J.G. Ballard
Picador, 400 pp., $16.00 (paper)
Kingdom Come
by J.G. Ballard
HarperCollins UK, 304 pp., £ 7.99 (paper)
In a January 2008 Times of London article about the fifty greatest British writers since World War II, J.G. Ballard was twenty-seventh, in a list that begins with Philip Larkin and George Orwell, and doesn't even get as far as such eminent figures as Margaret Drabble, Michael Holroyd, or Victoria Glendinning. Yet his work isn't well known in America, and many of his books, including his new memoir, have not so far been published here, maybe because of a limited audience for science fiction, social satire, and the avant-garde, three categories that claim this protean figure. The review quotes on the back cover of his novel Cocaine Nights (1996) refer to him variously as a mystery writer; 'one of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced'; a detective-novelist; and 'Britain's number one living novelist.'
Review, 3353 words
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