'The first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone'

The Kindness of Women

The Kindness of Women

J. G. Ballard

‘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.

Reviews of The Kindness of Women

    • ‘Autobiography taken to the highest reaches of fiction, another wonderful novel of scorching power’ Observer
    • ‘The most modern of writers; his art engages with the artefacts and obsessions of the second half of this century in a manner and with an intensity unmatched by any other writer I can think of’ William Boyd
    • ‘Quite as extraordinary an achievement as “Empire of the Sun” … A dazzling construction, a sequence of chapters almost every one of which is a tour de force in its own right’ Guardian
    • ‘Compulsively readable … unbearably moving’ Financial Times
    • ‘Brilliant … Ballard at his best’ Independent on Sunday
    • ‘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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