The Complete Short Stories

First in a two volume collection of short stories by the acclaimed author of Empire of the Sun, Crash, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.

J.G. Ballard is firmly established as one of Britain’s most highly regarded and influential novelists. However, during his long career he was also a prolific writer of short stories, many of which show the germination of ideas he used in his longer fiction.

This, the first book in a two-volume collection, offers a platform from which to view Ballard’s other works. Almost all of his novels had their seeds in short stories and this collection provides an extraordinary opportunity to trace the development of one of Britain’s most visionary writers.

Reviews

‘The most important British contemporary writer’ Will Self, Independent

‘[Ballard has] one of the most haunting, cogent and individual imaginations in contemporary literature’ William Boyd, Mail on Sunday

‘A feast, and not only for those who think – as I do – that Ballard has long been Britain's most original and inventive writer. For anyone bored with the stale conventions of mainstream fiction, his 90-odd stories of stilled time, desolate beauty and personal fulfilment in extreme situations will be sheer delight’ John Gray, New Statesman

‘This marvellous, inexhaustible book is a monument at the end of fertile lands… Ballard is a superb writer; few could publish a book of this size which is never boring, where the invention never flags. Unfailingly ingenious and perverse’ Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph

‘Thank God for J.G. Ballard and his short stories in which wonder and awe never fade. It is no exaggeration to say that Ballard's stories are beyond compare. This is a collection of tales and fables to be savoured by admirers and newcomers alike’ Robert Edric, Spectator

‘Reading this book of collected stories is a peculiarly enriching experience’ Jason Cowley, Observer

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, will be published in 2012. J.G. Ballard passed away in 2009.