‘Art is despair with dignity’

Crash Paperback

Crash

J. G. Ballard

The definitive cult, post-modern novel – a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism – reissued with a new introduction from Zadie Smith.

When Ballard, our narrator, smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes. Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the expressway, has gathered around him a collection of alienated crash victims and experiments with a series of auto-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 twentieth century and was made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg.

This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Robert Macfarlane, Martin Amis, James Lever and Ali Smith) and brand-new cover designs from the artist Stanley Donwood.

Reviews of Crash

    • ‘A work of very powerful originality. Ballard is amongst our finest writers of fiction’ Anthony Burgess
    • ‘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

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