‘Art is despair with dignity’

Hello America Paperback

Hello America

J. G. Ballard

Following the energy crisis of the late twentieth-century America has been abandoned. Now, a century later, a small group of European explorers returns to the deserted continent. But America is unrecognisable – the Bering Strait has been dammed and the whole continent has become a desert, populated by isolated natives and the bizarre remnants of a disintegrated culture. The expedition sets off from Manhattan on a cross-continent journey, through Holiday Inns and abandoned theme parks. They will uncover a shocking new power in the heart of Las Vegas in this unique vision of our world transformed.

Reviews of Hello America

  • ‘J G Ballard’s talent is one of the most mysterious and distempered in modern fiction…It is futile to have expectations of Ballard: he will inevitably subvert them’ Martin Amis, Observer

    ‘A mythically resonant epic journey…A joy – witty, playful, moving, mythic, poetic’ Literary Review

    ‘This fable lifts a great freight of ideas effortlessly…The story of an expedition driven on by wishes of possession and power but guided internally by myths of America whose sources lie in the late 20th century’ Guardian

    ‘Enter Mr Ballard’s worlds and you become entranced in a séance difficult to break out of, so powerful is his method’ The Times

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