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  • Published: 18 November 2025
  • ISBN: 9780262553940
  • Imprint: MIT Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 424
  • RRP: $60.00
Categories:

Selected Nonfiction, 1962–2007





J. G. Ballard's collected nonfiction from 1962 to 2007, mapping the cultural obsessions, experiences, and insights of one of the most original minds of his generation.

J. G. Ballard's collected nonfiction from 1962 to 2007, mapping the cultural obsessions, experiences, and insights of one of the most original minds of his generation.

J. G. Ballard was a colossal figure in English literature and an imaginative force of the twentieth century. Alongside seminal novels—from the notorious Crash (1973) to the semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun (1984)—Ballard was a sought-after reviewer and commentator, publishing journalism, memoir, and cultural criticism in a variety of forms. This volume collects the most significant short nonfiction of Ballard's fifty-year career, extending the range of the only previous collection of his nonfiction, A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996), which selected essays and reviews published between 1962 and 1995.

A decade on from Ballard's death in 2009, a new generation of readers needs a new collection. In the period following A User's Guide, Ballard's writing addressed 9/11, British politics from New Labour onward, and what he termed “the rise of soft fascism”—a diagnosis that maintains its relevance amid a shift toward right populism in European and US politics. Beautifully edited by Ballard scholar and novelist Mark Blacklock, this volume includes Ballard's editorials and manifestos; commentaries on his own work; commentaries on the work of others; reviews; and more. Above all, it makes the case for the currency of Ballard's work at a contemporary juncture at which so many of his diagnoses concerning the media and politics have become apparent.

  • Published: 18 November 2025
  • ISBN: 9780262553940
  • Imprint: MIT Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 424
  • RRP: $60.00
Categories:

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Praise for Selected Nonfiction, 1962–2007

“If everything for Ballard is fiction, what makes for inclusion in a selection of his nonfiction? Aware of his challenge, Blacklock hopes to 'illuminate the full range of Ballard's activities as a reviewer, essayist, journalist, commentator, memoirist, provocateur, compiler of lists, and talking head.' He achieves this handsomely.” --The Times Literary Supplement

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