Super-Cannes

By J. G. Ballard, Introduction by Ali Smith

A high-tech business park on the Mediterranean coast is the setting for a most disturbing crime in this bestseller from the master of dystopia, J.G. Ballard.

A disturbing mystery awaits Paul and Jane Sinclair when they arrive in Eden-Olympia, a high-tech business park in the hills above Cannes. Jane is to work as a doctor for those who live in this ultra-modern workers’ paradise. But what caused her predecessor to go on a shooting spree that made headlines around the world? As Paul investigates his new surroundings, he begins to uncover a thriving subculture of crime that is spiralling out of control.

Both a novel of ideas and a compelling thriller that will keep you turning the pages to the shocking denouement, Super-Cannes is an extraordinary satire from the bestselling author of Drowned World, Cocaine Nights and Crash. Extreme Metaphors, a collection of interviews with Ballard, will be published in 2012

Format: ebook
Release Date: 29 Aug 2013
Pages: None
ISBN: 978-0-00-732218-3
J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg. His controversial novel Crash was made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg. His 2000 novel Cocaine Nights received the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book prize. J.G. Ballard died in 2009.

”'Sublime…an elegant, elaborate trap of a novel, which reads as a companion piece to Cocaine Nights but takes ideas from that novel and runs further. The first essential novel of the 21st century” - Independent

”'Possibly his greatest book. Super-Cannes is both a novel of ideas and a compelling thriller that will keep you turning the pages to the shocking denouement. Only Ballard could have produced it” - Sunday Express

”'In this tautly paced thriller he brilliantly details how man’s darker side derails a vast experiment in living, and shows the dangers of a near-future in which going mad is the only way of staying sane” - Daily Mail

”'Vintage Ballard, a gripping blend of stylised thriller and fantastic imaginings” - Guardian