Le lendemain de Pearl Harbor, les Japonais s'emparent de Shanghai. Dans la panique qui suit la canonnade, Jim, onze ans, est séparé de ses parents. Il est recueilli, peut-être pour des raisons ambiguës, par deux marins américains, puis arrêté avec eux et enfermé dans un camp, à Longhua. Délaissé par ses compatriotes, il est bientôt fasciné par l'occupant japonais et ne comprend pas pourquoi il se retrouve sur les routes pour une marche forcée vers le stade de Nantao. Là, entouré de cadavres et d'un amoncellement d'objets volés, il verra le grand éclair de la bombe atomique de Nagasaki, et il repartira, seul, dans un paysage de rizières dévastées, jonchées de carcasses et d'épaves, pour se réfugier au camp de Loghua...

Empire du soleil

The second in a two volume collection of acclaimed short stories by the author of Empire of the Sun, Crash, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.

 JG Ballard is firmly established as one of Britain's most highly regarded and influential novelists. However, during his long career he was also a prolific writer of short stories, many of which show the germination of ideas he used in his longer fiction.

 This, the second book in a two-volume collection, offers a platform from which to view Ballard's other works. Almost all of his novels had their seeds in short stories and this collection provides an extraordinary opportunity to trace the development of one of Britain's most visionary writers.

The Complete Short Stories - Volume 2

The heartrending story of a British boy's four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War.

Empire of the sun

Coming in March 2016 from acclaimed director Ben Wheatley, a major motion picture adaptation of J. G. Ballard's compelling and unnerving tale of what happens when life in a luxury apartment building descends into chaos, starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans and Elisabeth Moss.

 'Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.'

 Within the walls of a high-tech forty-storey high-rise, the residents are hell-bent on an orgy of sex and destruction, answering to primal urges that their utopian surroundings can't satisfy. The high-rise is a would-be paradise turned dystopia, ruled by intimidation and violence, and, as the residents organize themselves for war, floor against floor, no one wants it to stop .

High-Rise

Depuis un demi-siècle, J.G. Ballard a publié vingt-cinq livres de fiction. Deux d'entre eux ont été adaptés au cinéma : Empire du Soleil par Steven Spielberg et Crash par David Cronenberg. Il rassemble aujourd'hui dans Millénaire mode d'emploi le meilleur de ses essais et articles, sur tous les thèmes qui ont nourri son œuvre : cinéma, art, science, littérature, vies des personnages publics, médias de masse, avenir de la société de consommation. On a pu dire, à l'occasion de la reparution de son chef-d'œuvre La Foire aux atrocités, que si Ballard a écrit une littérature d'anticipation - force nous est de la lire à présent comme de la critique sociale. Comment J.G. Ballard a-t-il déchiffré les mutations de notre temps ? On le comprendra en lisant la somme que composent les quatre-vingt-dix chapitres de ce " mode d'emploi du Millénaire ".

Millénaire mode d'emploi

'This is autobiography taken to the highest reaches of fiction, another wonderful novel of scorching power, shot through with honesty and lyricism' Observer

 The Kindness of Women continues the story of Jim, the young boy whose experiences in Japanese-occupied Shanghai were described in Empire of the Sun. It follows his return to post-war England, setting his childhood in the context of a lifetime.

 Jim tries, and fails, to find stability as a medical student at Cambridge, then as a trainee RAF pilot in Canada. Having finally settled into happy family life, his world is ripped apart by domestic tragedy. He plunges into the maelstrom of the 1960s, an instigator and subject of every aspect of cultural, social and sexual revolution.

 We follow, in all this, the progress of a bruised mind as it tries to make sense of the upheaval around it. Turning conspicuously, as in Empire of the Sun, to the events of his own life, Ballard makes of experience fiction that is frankly startling and, at its most tender, powerfully moving.

 This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard's works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including James Lever, Ali Smith, Hari Kunzru and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.

The Kindness of Women

The definitive cult, post-modern novel - a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism.  When our narrator smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, his sense of sexual possibilities in the world around him becomes detached. As he begins an affair with the dead man''s wife, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes. Then he encounters Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the expressway, who has gathered around him a collection of alienated crash victims and experiments with a series of erotic atrocities, each more sinister than the last. But Vaughan craves the ultimate crash - a head-on collision of blood, semen, engine coolant and iconic celebrity.  First published in 1973 ''Crash'' remains one of the most shocking novels of the second half of the twentieth century and was made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenburg.

CRASH

Richard Pearson, publiciste au chômage, cherche à démêler les circonstances étranges du meurtre de son père, mortellement blessé lors d'une rixe à Brooklands, une ville de la banlieue de Londres.
Parti enquêter sur place, Pearson se retrouve plongé dans la vie quotidienne de cette morne cité en bordure d'autoroute dont le centre commercial, Métro-Centre, lieu du crime, semble être devenu la seule raison de vivre. Hanté par cette étrange disparition, Pearson tâtonne, à la recherche d'un indice. Mais très vite, les pistes se brouillent ; Richard est témoin de manifestations de haine et de nationalisme inquiétantes, le consumérisme ambiant vire à l'obsession et la déliquescence sociale se fait partout sentir.
Plus encore qu'un assassin, c'est une vérité qu'il découvrira au bout du chemin : celle qui dort, enfouie, au fin fond de nos sociétés postmodernes...
Fascisation des esprits, consumérisme morbide : après Millenium People, Ballard poursuit avec Que notre règne arrive son exploration du cauchemar climatisé.

Empire du soleil

Résumé

Plus de livres de J. G. Ballard

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