The Crystal World

From J. G. Ballard, author of ‘Crash’ and ‘Cocaine Nights’ comes his extraordinary vision of an African forest that turns all in its path to crystal.

Through a ‘leaking’ of time, the West African jungle starts to crystallize. Trees metamorphose into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses. Most flee the area in terror, afraid to face a catastrophe they cannot understand.

But some, dazzled and strangely entranced, remain to drift through this dreamworld forest: a doctor in pursuit of his ex-mistress, an enigmatic Jesuit wielding a crystal cross and a tribe of lepers searching for Paradise.

In this tour de force of the imagination, Ballard transports the reader into one of his most unforgettable landscapes.

Reviews

‘Something magical and not to be missed’ Guardian

‘Beautifully rendered … Ballard the poet in full ecstatic blast’
Anthony Burgess

‘Of all the unknown regions Ballard’s imagination has opened up, this crystalline forest is the most haunting’ Guardian

‘A haunting vision of diseased beauty … Ballard sustains it with extraordinary intensity’ Observer

‘Ballard transports us once more into his own mystical, glittering and poetic universe’ Sunday Telegraph

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

About the author

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.