"Concrete Island pays twisted homage to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Newly reissued with an introduction from Neil Gaiman. On a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament soon turns into horror as Maitland--a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe--realizes...

A startling and at times unsettlingly prescient collection of J.G. Ballard's greatest interviews. J.G. Ballard was a literary giant. Best known for his controversial bestseller 'Crash' and the memoir 'Empire of the Sun', he was a writer of unique talent - always surprising, frequently prescient. Such acuity was not exclusive to his novels and, as this book reminds us, Ballard's restive intelligence sharpened itself in dialogue. He entertained many...

The Crystal World, J. G. Ballard's fourth novel, which established his reputation as a writer of extraordinary talent and imaginative powers, tells the story of a physician specializing in the treatment of leprosy who is invited to a small outpost in the interior of Africa. Finding the roadways blocked, he takes to the river, and embarks on a frightening journey through a strange petrified forest whose area expands daily, affecting not only the physical...

The story of a British boy, James Graham, whose privileged life is upturned by the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, December 8, 1941. Separated from his parents, he is eventually captured, and taken to Soo Chow confinement camp, next to a captured Chinese airfield. Amidst the sickness and food shortages in the camp, Jim attempts to reconstruct his former life, all the while bringing spirit and dignity to those around him.

Dr. Robert Laing is the newest resident of a luxurious apartment in a high-tech concrete skyscraper whose lofty location places him amongst the upper class. But as power outages become more frequent and building flaws emerge, particularly on the lower floors, the regimented social strata begins to crumble and the building becomes a battlefield in a literal class war.