Super-Cannes

About the Author

J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China, where his father was a businessman. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he and his family were placed in a civilian prison camp. They returned to England in 1946. After reading Medicine at Cambridge for two years, he worked as a copywriter and Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF. His first short story appeared in New Worlds in 1956, and after working on scientific journals he published his first major novel, The Drowned World, in 1962. His acclaimed 1984 novel 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 1973 novel Crash has also been made into an equally controversial film, directed by David Cronenberg. J. G. Ballard's most recent novels include The Kindness of Women, Rushing to Paradise, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.