Cocaine Nights

‘Snort up Cocaine Nights. It’s disorientating, deranging and knocks the work of other avant-garde writers into a hatted c**k’ Will Self

Five people die in an unexplained house fire in the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, an exclusive enclave for the rich, retired British, centred on the thriving Club Nautico. The club manager, Frank Prentice, pleads guilty to charges of murder – yet not even the police believe him. When his Charles arrives to unravel the truth, he gradually discovers that behind the resort’s civilized façade flourishes a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex.

At once an engrossing mystery and a novel of ideas, Cocaine Nights is a stunningly original work, a vision of a society coming to terms with a life of almost unlimited leisure.

This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Neil Gaiman, Zadie Smith, John Lanchester and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.

Reviews

‘Utterly compulsive’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Snort up Cocaine Nights. It’s disorientating, deranging and knocks the work of other avant-garde writers into a hatted c**k’ Will Self

‘The possessor of a terrifying and exhilarating imagination – and a national treasure’ Guardian

‘Guaranteed to keep you reading into the early hours’ Sunday Times

‘Thrillingly wired … dazzlingly original’ Independent

‘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.