'Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude'

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Kingdom Come

J. G. Ballard

A gunman opens fire in a shopping mall. Not a terrorist, apparently, but a madman with a rifle. Or not, as he is mysteriously (and quickly) set free without charge. One of the victims is the father of Richard Pearson, unemployed advertising executive and life-long rebel. Now he is driving out to Brooklands, the apparently peaceful town on the M25 which has at its heart the very shiny shoppers’ paradise where the shooting happened – the Metro-Centre. Then the main suspect is released – thanks to the testimony of self-styled pillars of the community like the doctor who treated Richard’s father on his deathbed. Richard, determined to unravel the mystery, starts to believe that something deeply sinister lurks behind the pristine facades of the labyrinthine mall, its 24-hour cable TV and sports club…

Reviews of Kingdom Come

  • ‘Dystopias are Ballard’s stock-in-trade and, when on song, he animates them better than anyone else…It takes a master novelist to pick out the small details…Fascinating’ Sunday Telegraph

    ‘It is his ability to summon a deteriorated but recognisable modern world into being that makes him among the finest dystopians at work’ Sunday Times

    ‘We’re in Ballard-land, his old archetypes at war in a familiar-yet-strange terrain, and that should be compelling enough for any reader…Ballard, paradoxically, with all his characters gripped by obsession and necessity, is one of the great novelists of freedom’ Financial Times

    ‘Kingdom Come looks like a report on the state of modern Britain, but it’s really a report on the state of J.G. Ballard’s head, and the good news is that it’s as fertile as ever…Kingdom Come is impressively packed with brilliant apercus.’ Observer

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