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Rushing to Paradise
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J.G. Ballard -- author of 'Crash' and 'Empire of the Sun' -- explores the dangers of extremism in ecology and feminism in this highly acclaimed modern fable. Veteran campaigner Dr Barbara Rafferty's obsessive crusade to save the albatross on the Pacific atoll of Saint-Esprit suddenly gains international support when millions of TV viewers witness the shooting of her young acolyte Neil Dempsey on a foolhardy rescue mission. The coverage that results allows Dr Barbara to turn the deserted island into a sanctuary. It becomes a remote paradise home for Neil, an odd team of eco-enthusiasts and idealists and a growing collection of the world's endangered species, sent there to find protection from extinction. However, as Dr Barbara isolates the residents more and more from the world outside it becomes clear that all on the island is not right. As the men begin to sicken while the women flourish, Neil is forced to question why he remains healthy, and will this change when a new man arrives? Brilliantly unsettling in classic 'Ballardian' style, this is a novel in which all expectations are upset and all roles reversed. Includes PS Section / J.G. Ballard has been at the forefront of modern British fiction for over four decades, achieving remarkable critical acclaim and commercial success / His work ranges from the hugely popular 'Empire of the Sun', based on his experiences in a Japanese POW camp, via experimental novels such as 'Crash', to unnerving visions of utopian worlds gone wrong, such as 'Cocaine Nights' / 'Rushing to Paradise' is to be re-issued to coincide with the publication of J G Ballard's memoir, 'Miracles of Life', in paperback

About the Author

J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. He published his first novel, The Drowned World, in 1961. His 1984 bestseller 'Empire of the Sun' won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg. His most recent novel is 'Kingdom Come', published in 2006, and his autobiography 'Miracles of Life' is published in 2008.

Reviews

'Ballard is a magician of the contemporary scene and a literary saboteur. "Rushing to Paradise" is a Wellsian drama of extremity and isolation!a parable about the ratlike behaviour of marooned human beings. No one else writes with such enchanted clarity or strange power.' Guardian 'Pure Ballard. I read it with rapt fascination!wonderful.' William Boyd 'Robinson Crusoe in reverse. Teasing and sardonic!Ballard at his best.' Independent on Sunday Praise for J.G.Ballard: 'There are those (and I am among them) who would back Ballard as Britain's number one living novelist' John Sutherland, Sunday Times 'One of the brightest stars in post-war fiction' Kingsley Amis 'One of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced, the possessor of a terrifying and exhilarating imagination' Guardian 'Ballard has issued a series of bulletins on the modern world of almost unerring prescience. Other writers describe; Ballard anticipates' Will Self

'Ballard is a magician of the contemporary scene and a literary saboteur. "Rushing to Paradise" is a Wellsian drama of extremity and isolation!a parable about the ratlike behaviour of marooned human beings. No one else writes with such enchanted clarity or strange power.' Guardian 'Pure Ballard. I read it with rapt fascination!wonderful.' William Boyd 'Robinson Crusoe in reverse. Teasing and sardonic!Ballard at his best.' Independent on Sunday Praise for J.G.Ballard: 'There are those (and I am among them) who would back Ballard as Britain's number one living novelist' John Sutherland, Sunday Times 'One of the brightest stars in post-war fiction' Kingsley Amis 'One of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced, the possessor of a terrifying and exhilarating imagination' Guardian 'Ballard has issued a series of bulletins on the modern world of almost unerring prescience. Other writers describe; Ballard anticipates' Will Self

In one of Picador's first hardcover titles, Ballard (Crash) offers another of his tautly imagined experiments with 20th-century pathology. Here he traces an environmental crusade from its media-driven invasion of a South Seas atomic test site to its establishment of an endangered species' sanctuary, to its metamorphosis into an atavistic cult. Ballard's futuristic characters are nearly always less individual personalities than mutating preoccupations, and this cast of environmental utopians who quixotically strand themselves to save an albatross colony is no exception. Sixteen-year-old Neil Dempsey, who is drawn into the expedition by the charismatic, inscrutable ``Dr. Barbara'' (Rafferty), is joined by a Hawaiian who dreams of an independent island kingdom, a Boston Brahmin missionary, an animal-rightist airline stewardess and a band of German eco-hippies. Amid Ballard's hallucinatory evocation of the island's native flora, imported endangered fauna and abandoned military and scientific installations, Dr. Barbara proves ready to sacrifice anything or anyone for her unstable cause, whether to the international media, the island jungle or her artificial paradise. Although the naïve and uncertain Neil proves a comparatively weak narrative lens for Dr. Barbara and her spiraling projects, Ballard's story moves tensely along, an apocalyptic cautionary tale for the millennium. (May)

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