Kingdom Come (28 page)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

When J. G. Ballard passed in April 2009, the reading world lost one if its most prophetic writers. Over the last century, no other modern fiction writer examined the deleterious effects of technology on culture more unerringly than Ballard, and his surreal, yet richly atmospheric prose has had an indelible effect on Western literature.

Born in Shanghai on November 15, 1930, James Graham Ballard wrote such legendary novels as
The Drowned World
and
Cocaine Nights
, but he is most well-known for
Crash
(1973) and his autobiographical novel
Empire of the Sun
(1984), both of which were made into movies and became box office hits. The author of eighteen novels and twenty short story collections, including
The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard
, which was published to great acclaim in 2009, Ballard has been praised as “the most original English writer of the last century” (Martin Amis,
The Guardian
) and “the ideal chronicler of our disturbed modernity” (Jason Cowley,
The Observer
). That his body of work has remained so fresh and shocking makes him a truly unique literary giant, one whose singular imagination will continue to captivate readers for generations to come.

Copyright © 2006 by J. G. Ballard

First American Edition 2012

All rights reserved

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Book design by Chris Welch

Production manager: Louise Mattarelliano

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ballard, J. G., 1930–2009.

Kingdom come / J.G. Ballard. — 1st American ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-87140-403-9 (hardcover)

1. Advertising executives—Fiction. 2. Consumption (Economics)—Social
aspects—England—Fiction. 3. Suburban life—England—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6052.A46K55 2012

823’.914—dc23

2011041724

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