The Unlimited Dream Company

by Ballard (Author)

New
Paperback
2014
$11.47

With a new introduction by John Gray and striking new cover from the artist Stanley Donwood, the author of 'Cocaine Nights' brings you the story of suburban London transformed into an exotic dreamworld. When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is surreally transformed. Vultures invade the rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man's urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations towards an apocalyptic climax. In this characteristically inventive novel Ballard displays to devastating effect the extraordinary imagination that established him as one of Britain's most highly acclaimed writers. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard's 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.

Synopsis

With a new introduction by John Gray and striking new cover from the artist Stanley Donwood, the author of 'Cocaine Nights' brings you the story of suburban London transformed into an exotic dreamworld. When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is surreally transformed. Vultures invade the rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man's urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations towards an apocalyptic climax. In this characteristically inventive novel Ballard displays to devastating effect the extraordinary imagination that established him as one of Britain's most highly acclaimed writers. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard's 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.

$11.47

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
Edition: New e.
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 25 Sep 2014
ISBN 10: 0586089950
ISBN 13: 9780586089958
Book Overview: From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller 'Cocaine Nights' comes an acclaimed backlist title -- in which suburban London is transformed into an exotic dreamworld -- now reissued in new cover style. / J.G. Ballard has been at the forefront of modern British fiction for over three decades, achieving remarkable critical acclaim and commercial success / First published in 1979, The Unlimited Dream Company is an astonishing literary fantasy -- in which a familiar landscape becomes extraordinary through his distinctively bizarre vision -- now being reissued as a Flamingo Modern Classic as part of a repackaging of Flamingo's Ballard backlist

Media Reviews

`Blindingly original ... Moving, thrilling, exquisitely written' Anthony Burgess

`A remarkable piece of invention, a flight from the world of the familiar and the real into the exotic universe of dream and desire ... Dense and erotic and magical, a pleasure to read' Malcolm Bradbury, New York Times Book Review

`Extraordinary ... There is no doubt of the intensity and originality of the imagination ... Far beyond the scope of most novelists' Spectator

`A remarkable fantasist ... Ballard's eloquence is as lush as the flowering vines he hangs from his multi-storey garages' Observer

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

Author Bio

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.