The Drought [Paperback]

J. G. Ballard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2008

The world is threatened by dramatic climate change in this highly acclaimed and influential novel, one of the most important early works by the bestselling author of 'Cocaine Nights' and 'Super-Cannes'. Water. Man's most precious commodity is a luxury of the past. Radioactive waste from years of industrial dumping has caused the sea to form a protective skin strong enough to devastate the Earth it once sustained. And while the remorseless sun beats down on the dying land, civilisation itself begins to crack. Violence erupts and insanity reigns as the remnants of mankind struggle for survival in a worldwide desert of despair.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'A strange and rather wonderful book full of haunting landscapes, phantasmagoria and disaster that clangs on the mind. An impressive novel at any level. Its obscurities and surrealist flourishes only heighten the dreamlike atmosphere.' Guardian 'The experience Mr Ballard offers is mystical!it is weird; it is grotesque; it is magnificently Gothic.' Sunday Times 'By arranging a world drought to kill off the majority of people, he brings his characters to a state of timeless, arid obsession with what is left of water and of their own selves!a sensitive, baroque study in decadence.' Daily Telegraph 'Ballard paints staggering imaginary landscapes. A very impressive book by a deeply serious writer, the originality and power of whose vision can be felt.' Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

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 has recently been made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0586089969
• ISBN-13: 978-0586089965
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,306,293 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Shanghai in 1930, J. G. BALLARD is the author of sixteen novels, including "Empire of the Sun," "The Drowned World," and "Crash." He lived in London until his death in April 2009.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The metaphors of the Sun, July 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Drought (Mass Market Paperback)

The Drought is another apocalyptic novel by futurist author J.G.Ballard. In narrative as spare and dry as the expanding deserts he envisions, Ballard describes an earthwide ecological catastrophe when industrial pollution causes a breakdown of the water cycle. Man and planet parch together. This disruption of the elements is accompanied by bizarre disturbances of the human landscape; old friendships fail while old enmities take sinister new courses; teams of "fishermen", their boats stranded in the dust of former harbors, cast their nets for a new, easier prey. Idiots become prophet kings in this redefined world. While not as vividly drawn as some of Ballard's other works, The Drought is an expertly written book; full of cryptic symbology, poetic flashes, casual violence and "Ballardian" prose. Another five star effort by this under appreciated writer.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The book that got me reading, September 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Drought (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a frightening world so close to our own. A world where one small mistake leads to a world wide drought. A world where communities, lives and loves fall apart. This was the first book that moved me, and I can still smell the salt of those drying oceans. This is Ballard at his best.

4.0 out of 5 stars Global Warming Revisited via Ballard's The Drought, October 8, 2011

By 

JK Huddleston - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Drought (Paperback)

An antithetical companion piece to 'The Drowned World,' Ballard's 'The Drought' is (on the surface) a peering into mans future as cataclismic forces, this time from the savage effects of global warming, ravage the world, thrusting social and psychological changes upon the survivors as they scavange for precious resources.

In his own view, Ballard reacast the 'catastrophe story' as an alternative to our own worldly perceptions, challenging his characters (and us) in a timeless universe to make the best of the situation and 'swim.' Ballard also considered mans reinvention or reinterpretation of the catastrophe story as the writer's own feelings of 'self-destruction.'

Ballard is an intensely descriptive and thoughtful writer, effortlessly (it seems to me) providing his readers with believable scenarios and possibilities. As others have commented, his finely crafted prose reaches a level of beauty and poetry that few can match with consistency.

As a latecomer to his works, I thoroughly enjoy his earlier sci-fi writing from the '60's, 'The Drought' included. I recommend any of his earlier works, The Crystal World one of my favorites. For something different, try reading Crash or The Atrocity Exhibition from the same era.

JKH