Crash - Softcover

J.G. Ballard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000728702X ISBN 13: 9780007287024

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2014

Synopsis

The definitive cult, post-modern novel-a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism.

When Ballard, our narrator, smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, his sense of sexual possibilities in the world around him becomes detached. As he begins an affair with the dead man's wife, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes. Then he encounters Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the expressway, who has gathered around him a collection of alienated crash victims and experiments with a series of auto-erotic atrocities, each more sinister than the last. But Vaughan craves the ultimate crash-a head-on collision of blood, semen, engine coolant and iconic celebrity.

First published in 1973Crashremains one of the most shocking novels of the second half of the twentieth century and was made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg.

Ballard's autobiographyMiracles of Lifewas published in 2008 andExtreme Metaphors, a collection of interviews with the author, is due out in 2012.

About this title

Review:

J. G. Ballard's graphic, violent novel is controversial wherever it is read, even on Amazon.com's own Web page! The book's characters are obsessed with automobile accidents and are determined to narrate the horrors of the car crash as luridly as possible. In the words of the novel's protagonist, the wounds caused by automobile collisions are "the keys to a new sexuality born from a perverse technology." Read this novel and learn why David Cronenberg, who had previously adapted Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch for the screen, fought to turn it into his latest film.

About the Author:

J.G. BALLARDwas born in 1930 in Shanghai. After internment in a civilian prison camp, his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestsellerEmpire of the Sunwon the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His controversial novelCrashwas made into a film by David Cronenberg. His autobiographyMiracles of Lifewas published in 2008, and a collection of interviews with the author,Extreme Metaphors, was published in 2012. J.G. Ballard passed away in 2009.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 000728702X
• ISBN 13: 9780007287024
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208