High-Rise (Film Tie-In)

Now a major film: J. G. Ballard’s compelling and unnerving tale of what happens when life in a luxury apartment building descends into chaos.

‘Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.’

Within the walls of an elegant forty-storey high-rise, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on ‘enemy’ floors, and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for mayhem.

In this visionary novel, the veneer of civilised society is stripped away as the inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, create a dystopian world ruled by intimidation and violence. And no one wants it to stop …

J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai. After internment in a civilian prison camp, 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. His controversial novel ‘Crash’ was made into a film by David Cronenberg. His autobiography ‘Miracles of Life’ was published in 2008, and a collection of interviews with the author, ‘Extreme Metaphors’, was published in 2012. J. G. Ballard passed away in 2009.

‘Ballard’s finest novel … a triumph’ The Times

‘ingenious … ‘High-Rise’ is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind’ Martin Amis

‘Chilling … Ballard is a prophetic writer’ Sunday Times

‘The writing is cool, the observation exact, the idea bold and well-developed; everything seems to demand attention and analysis’ Financial Times

‘The terrifying thing about Ballard is his logic; is this science fiction or history written ahead of its time?’ Len Deighton —