J.G. Ballard - author of 'Cocaine Nights' and 'Super-Cannes' - explores the dangers of extremism in ecology and feminism in this highly acclaimed modern fable.Veteran campaigner Dr Barbara Rafferty's obsessive crusade to save the albatross on the Pacific atoll of Saint-Esprit suddenly gains international support when millions of TV viewers witness the shooting of her young acolyte Neil Dempsey on a foolhardy rescue mission. Soon Dr Barbara turns the deserted island into a sanctuary - a remote paradise home for Neil, an odd team of eco-enthusiasts and idealists and a growing collection of the world's endangered species. In time they will discover that some species are in more danger than others.
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J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. He published his first novel, The Drowned World, in 1961. His 1984 bestseller 'Empire of the Sun' won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg.
In one of Picador's first hardcover titles, Ballard (Crash) offers another of his tautly imagined experiments with 20th-century pathology. Here he traces an environmental crusade from its media-driven invasion of a South Seas atomic test site to its establishment of an endangered species' sanctuary, to its metamorphosis into an atavistic cult. Ballard's futuristic characters are nearly always less individual personalities than mutating preoccupations, and this cast of environmental utopians who quixotically strand themselves to save an albatross colony is no exception. Sixteen-year-old Neil Dempsey, who is drawn into the expedition by the charismatic, inscrutable "Dr. Barbara" (Rafferty), is joined by a Hawaiian who dreams of an independent island kingdom, a Boston Brahmin missionary, an animal-rightist airline stewardess and a band of German eco-hippies. Amid Ballard's hallucinatory evocation of the island's native flora, imported endangered fauna and abandoned military and scientific installations, Dr. Barbara proves ready to sacrifice anything or anyone for her unstable cause, whether to the international media, the island jungle or her artificial paradise. Although the naive and uncertain Neil proves a comparatively weak narrative lens for Dr. Barbara and her spiraling projects, Ballard's story moves tensely along, an apocalyptic cautionary tale for the millennium.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. 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. Veteran campaigner Dr Barbara Raffertys obsessive crusade to save the albatross on the Pacific atoll of Saint-Esprit gains international support when millions of TV viewers witness the shooting of her young acolyte Neil Dempsey on a foolhardy rescue mission. The coverage that results allows Dr Barbara to turn the deserted island into a sanctuary. It becomes a remote paradise home for Neil, an odd team of eco-enthusiasts and idealists and a growing collection of the worlds endangered species, sent there to find protection from extinction.However, as Dr Barbara isolates the residents more and more from the world outside it becomes clear that all on the island is not right. As the men begin to sicken while the women flourish, Neil is forced to question why he remains healthy, and will this change when a new man arrives?Brilliantly unsettling in classic Ballardian style, this is a novel in which all expectations are upset and all roles reversed.This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballards 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. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780006548140
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