A final statement from the greatest clairvoyant of twentieth-century literature.
Never before published in America, this revelatory autobiography—hailed as “fascinating [and] amazingly lucid” ( Guardian )—charts the remarkable story of James Graham Ballard, a man described by Martin Amis as “the most original English writer of the last century.” Beginning with his Shanghai childhood, Miracles of Life guides us from the deprivations of Lunghua Camp during World War II, which provide the back story for his best-selling Empire of the Sun , to his arrival in war-torn England and his emergence as “the ideal chronicler of our disturbed modernity” ( Observer ). With prose of characteristic precision, Ballard movingly recalls his first attempts at science fiction, the 1970 American pulping of The Atrocity Exhibition —which sprang from his fascination with JFK conspiracy theories—and his life as a single father after the premature death of his wife. “This book should make yet more converts to a cause that Ballard’s devotees have been pleading for years” ( Independent ).

J. G. Ballard

Liveright Publishing Corporation

United States, United States of America

1st American ed, New York, 2008

Originally published: London : Fourth Estate, 2008.

J.G. Ballard has been, for over fifty years, one of this country's most significant writers. Beginning with the events that inspired his classic novel, "Empire of the Sun", in this revelatory autobiography he charts the course of his astonishing life. "Miracles of Life" takes us from the vibrant surroundings of pre-war Shanghai, to the deprivations and unexpected freedoms of Lunghua Camp, to Ballard's arrival in a devastated Britain. Ballard recounts his first attempts at fiction and his part in the social and artistic revolutions of the 60s. He describes his friendships with figures as diverse as Kingsley Amis, Michael Moorcock and Eduardo Paolozzi alongside recollections of his domestic life in Shepperton -- raising three children as a single father following the unexpected and premature death of his wife.

xiv, 250 p. : 22 cm

2023-06-28