High-Rise by J G Ballard

High-Rise by J G Ballard

From the author of ‘Crash’ and ‘Cocaine Nights’ comes an unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control.

'Living in high-rises required a special type of behavior, one that was acquiescent, restrained, even perhaps slightly mad. A psychotic would have a ball here.'

Welcome to the high-rise, a brand-new way of living designed for a modern world. Stretching forty floors into the sky, residents have everything they could wish for – from the brash filmmaker at the bottom to the lauded architect himself at the top. But when modern man of medicine Dr Robert Laing moves in, his grip on reason is soon tested to breaking point. As the foundations of civilisation itself begin to crumble, cocktail parties give way to brutal raids and once-luxurious amenities become arenas for violence in this unsettling orgy of barbarity and primal chaos.

‘Ballard’s finest novel … a triumph’ The Times

‘ingenious … ‘High-Rise’ is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind’ Martin Amis

‘Chilling … Ballard is a prophetic writer’ Sunday Times

‘The writing is cool, the observation exact, the idea bold and well-developed; everything seems to demand attention and analysis’ Financial Times

‘The terrifying thing about Ballard is his logic; is this science fiction or history written ahead of its time?’ Len Deighton

J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai. After internment in a civilian prison camp, his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller ‘Empire of the Sun’ won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His controversial novel ‘Crash’ was made into a film by David Cronenberg. His autobiography ‘Miracles of Life’ was published in 2008, and a collection of interviews with the author, ‘Extreme Metaphors’, was published in 2012. J. G. Ballard passed away in 2009.