Extreme Metaphors

Author(s): J. G. Ballard

Writing

A startling and at times unsettlingly prescient collection of J.G. Ballard's greatest interviews. After a morning's writing J.G. Ballard sometimes found himself with company. Latterly, friends and interviewers came to his Shepperton home, the same home from which Ballard had observed the rising suburban tide, the advancing world he captured, analysed and second-guessed so accurately in his fiction. His acuity was not exclusive to the page, though, as this book reminds us: Ballard had a restive, vigilant intelligence that overflowed naturally into conversation, often sharpening itself in dialogue. He entertained his many admirers and interviewers with insights into the world as he saw it, and speculated, often correctly, about its future. As a result of these conversations he acquired a somewhat oracular reputation. Now, for the first time, Extreme Metaphors collects the finest interviews of Ballard's career. It is not only a validation of those visionary and predictive instincts, proof of a remarkable, worldly sympathy, but also a tribute to a celebrated thinker and great interviewee. It is a collection for lovers of Ballard but also for lovers of this world.


Product Information

Praise for 'Miracles of Life': 'The greatest of living English writers...a superb memoir.' Mail on Sunday 'What a wonderful book. If there's a better memoir by a contemporary English writer, I don't know it.' Daily Telegraph 'Fascinating...amazingly lucid...a memoir that effortlessly combines emotional frankness with artistic insight.' The Guardian 'Essential reading for fans.' New Statesman

J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. 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. His memoir Miracles of Life was published in 2008. J.G. Ballard died in 2009. Simon Sellars lives in Melbourne, Australia. He is the editor of the magazine Architectural Review Asia Pacific and the publisher of ballardian.com. His writing on architecture, urbanism, film, travel and Ballard has been published widely.

General Fields

  • : 9780007454853
  • : HarperCollins Publishers
  • : Fourth Estate Ltd
  • : June 2012
  • : 240mm X 159mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : October 2012
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : J. G. Ballard
  • : Hardback
  • : 1112
  • : 823.914
  • : 304