The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard - Paperback

by J. G. Ballard (Author), Martin Amis (Introduction by)

With a body of work unparalleled in twentieth-century literature, J. G. Ballard is recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic writers in the world. With the much-hailed release of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard, readers now have a means to celebrate the unmatched range and mesmerizing cadences of a literary genius. Whether writing about musical orchids, human cannibalism, or the secret history of World War III, Ballard's Complete Stories evokes the hallucinations of Kafka and Borges in its ability to render modern paranoia and fantastical creations on the page. A Washington Post Best Book of 2009, Boston Globe Best Book, Los Angeles Times Favorite Book, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book.

Back Jacket

More than one thousand compelling pages from one of the most haunting, cogent, and individual imaginations in contemporary literature.-William BoydNever before published in its entirety in America, with many stories new to American readers, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard is a monumental achievement by one of our greatest literary geniuses. Featuring such classics as "Prima Belladonna," "The Drowned Giant," and "The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race," the book evokes Poe and Kafka, Borges and Bradbury in its astonishing ability to render psychosis and modern paranoia in phantasmagorical detail on the printed page.Praise for J.G. Ballard: "Ballard will be remembered as the most original English writer of the last century . . . [and] as a one-man genre; no one else is remotely like him. . . . He was sui generis. What was influential, though, was the marvelous creaminess of his prose, and the weird and sudden expansions of his imagery."-Martin Amis, The Guardian"When I was a boy, I loved J. G. Ballard. And when I was a teenager, I loved J. G. Ballard. And as an adult, I loved J. G. Ballard."-Neil Gaiman"For anyone bored with the stale conventions of mainstream fiction, his 90-odd short stories of stilled time, desolate beauty and personal fulfillment in extreme situations will be sheer delight."-John Gray, The New Statesman"[W]ho would argue that ours is not a time of nihilism and that Ballard is not the ideal chronicler of our disturbed modernity?"-Jason Cowley, The Observer