- Traffic accidents, Survival, Fiction in English, Architects
A 35-year-old architect is driving home from his London office when his car swerves and crashes onto a traffic island lying below three converging motorways. Uninjured, he climbs the embankment to seek help, but no one will stop for him and he is trapped on the island, where he remains.
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Character
Intimate, grave, contemplative and bleak.
- intimateepic
- gravecomic
- contemplativerelentless
- warmbleak
- contemporarynostalgic
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About the book
- Author
- J. G. Ballard
- First published
- July 21, 1994
- Pages
- 176
- Publisher
- Farrar, Straus & Giroux, VINTAGE (RAND), Vintage Books
- Editions
- 15
- Language
- Italian, English
- ISBN
- 9780374128074
Where to read
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On Open Library, 11 have read it and 29 want to.
“SOON after three o'clock on the afternoon of April 22nd 1973, a 35-year-old architect named Robert Maitland was driving down the high-speed exit lane of the West-way interchange in central London.”
James Graham Ballard was born and raised in the International Settlement in Shanghai, China to a chemist. In 1943 the Japanese occupied the International Settlement and Ballard's family was sent to the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center, where they were interned for two years until the end of World War II. In 1946, Ballard went to England with his mother and sister, and stayed on in England after his mother and sister returned to China to rejoin his father. In 1949 he went to King's College, Cambridge to study medicine, but he began writing fiction and abandoned medicine in 1952 to pursue writing. In 1953 he joined the Air Force and was sent to the Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to train. There he di
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