Book description
A masterpiece of fiction from J. G. Ballard which asks, could
consumerism turn into Facism?
A gunman opens fire in a shopping mall. Not a terrorist, apparently,
but a madman with a rifle. Or not, as he is mysteriously (and quickly)
set free without charge.
One of the victims is the father of Richard Pearson, unemployed
advertising executive and life-long rebel. Now he is driving out to
Brooklands, the apparently peaceful town on the M25 which has at its
heart the very shiny shoppers' paradise where the shooting happened -
the Metro-Centre.
Then the main suspect is released - thanks to the testimony of
self-styled pillars of the community like the doctor who treated
Richard's father on his deathbed. Richard, determined to unravel the
mystery, starts to believe that something deeply sinister lurks behind
the pristine facades of the labyrinthine mall, its 24-hour cable TV and
sports club… 'Dystopias are Ballard's stock-in-trade and, when on
song, he animates them better than anyone else…It takes a master
novelist to pick out the small details…Fascinating' Sunday Telegraph
'It is his ability to summon a deteriorated but recognisable modern
world into being that makes him among the finest dystopians at work'
Sunday Times
'We're in Ballard-land, his old archetypes at war in a
familiar-yet-strange terrain, and that should be compelling enough for
any reader…Ballard, paradoxically, with all his characters gripped by
obsession and necessity, is one of the great novelists of freedom'
Financial Times
'Kingdom Come looks like a report on the state of modern Britain, but
it's really a report on the state of J. G. Ballard's head, and the good
news is that it's as fertile as ever…Kingdom Come is impressively packed
with brilliant apercus' Observer
'Kingdom Come is important, germane, timely and creepy, a tidal wreck
of ideas washed up on the artificial beach of our resort culture' Will
Self 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.
