Concrete Island
A Novel
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ISBN10: 1250171520
ISBN13: 9781250171528
Trade Paperback
176 Pages
$17.00
CA$23.00
On a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament soon turns into horror as Maitland—a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe—realizes that, despite evidence of other inhabitants, this doomed terrain has become a mirror of his own mind. Seeking the dark outer rim of the everyday, Ballard weaves private catastrophe into an intensely specular allegory.
Reviews
Praise for Concrete Island
"This is the excellent stuff of classic castaway adventure, stiffened here by contemporary overtones that call into question social values."—San Francisco Chronicle
Reviews from Goodreads
BOOK EXCERPTS
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1
through the crash barrier
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 Westway interchange in central...
About the author
J. G. Ballard; Introduction by Neil Gaiman
