'Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind'

The Crystal World

The Crystal World

Robert Macfarlane and J. G. Ballard

Through a ‘leaking’ of time, the West African jungle starts to crystallize. Trees are metamorphosed into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses. Fearing this transformation as a herald of the apocalypse, most flee the area in terror, afraid to face a catastrophe they cannot understand. But some, dazzled and strangely entranced, remain to drift through this dreamworld forest. Travelling through this gilded land, a doctor tries to resist its strange allure in pursuit of his ex-mistress, while a tribe of lepers search for Paradise… In this tour de force of the imagination, Ballard transports the reader into one of his most unforgettable landscapes.

Reviews of The Crystal World

    • ‘Something magical and not to be missed’ Guardian
    • ‘Beautifully rendered … Ballard the poet in full ecstatic blast’Anthony Burgess
    • ‘Of all the unknown regions Ballard’s imagination has opened up, this crystalline forest is the most haunting’ Guardian
    • ‘A haunting vision of diseased beauty … Ballard sustains it with extraordinary intensity’ Observer
    • ‘Ballard transports us once more into his own mystical, glittering and poetic universe’ Sunday Telegraph
    • ‘The terrifying thing about Ballard is his logic; is this science fiction or history written ahead of its time?’ Len Deighton

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