Book description
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 are metamorphosed into enormous jewels. Crocodiles
encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with
huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses. Fearing this
transformation as a herald of the apocalypse, 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. Travelling through this gilded land, a doctor tries to resist
its strange allure in pursuit of his ex-mistress, while a tribe of
lepers search for Paradise…
In this tour de force of the imagination, Ballard transports the reader
into one of his most unforgettable landscapes. '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, with its golden orioles frozen
in a lattice of jewels and men like conquistadores embalmed in diamond
armour. The creation of the crystal world is something magical and not
to be missed'
Guardian
'Brilliantly imagined, dark, brooding, convincing and powerful'
New Statesman
'By far his strongest and most individual novel' Brian Aldiss 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.
'One of the few genuine surrealists.' Guardian
