Millennium People
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Violent rebellion comes to London’s middle classes in the extraordinary new novel from the author of ‘Cocaine Nights’ and ‘Super-Cannes’.
When a bomb explodes at Heathrow, it looks like just another random act of violence to psychologist David Markham. But when he discovers that his ex-wife is among the victims he is compelled to further investigate the mysterious and shocking circumstances surrounding her death.
Acting on police suspicions he immerses himself in the strange world of London’s fringe protest movements. A quiet rebellion against middle-class normality is taking place. However as civic responsibility and the trappings of consumer society are jettisoned the movement grows steadily more bellicose and Markham is increasingly lured by the idea of revolution and terror.
Reviews
‘Unsettling and subversive … terrifically good’ Sunday Times
'Terrifying and strangely haunting … A riveting work from a writer of rare imaginative largesse, a bearer of bad tidings, unforgettably told' Daily Telegraph
'Wonderfully warped, blackly comic … written with Ballard's customary panache, its potent mix of sex, violence and radicalism will keep his fans happy’ Economist
‘Ballard’s instinct for the future is unnerving … Very few writers possess this kind of intelligence: to use it with such wit is almost criminal’ Independent on Sunday
‘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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The middle class launches a violent revolution in this prophetic satire by the late master Ballard (1930 2009). David Markham, a psychologist, infiltrates the "rebellion of the new proletariat" at naturally a cat show, looking for the architects of the Heathrow Airport bombing that killed his ex-wife. What he finds are a bored coterie of suburbanites: charmingly unhinged academic Kay Churchill, biker-priest Stephen Dexter, and Kurtz-figure Richard Gould, who dreams of liberation from the 20th century. As David's spying becomes increasingly participatory, his actions begin to worry his second wife, Sally, who may herself be at risk of being swept up in Richard's plans to expand his campaign of structured "pointless violence." Ballard is a British Philip K. Dick, heir to Conrad and H.G. Wells, in whose stories the present, taken to extremes, anticipates the future. In fact, the only complaint to be made of this bruisingly smart novel is that it has taken eight years for it to appear in the U.S.
