Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780007116867
Edition: New Ed
ISBN: 0007116861
Label: Flamingo
Manufacturer: Flamingo
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: May 21, 2001
Publisher: Flamingo
Studio: Flamingo

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
Easily one of the 20th century's most visionary writers, JG Ballard still lives far ahead of his time. Called his "prophetic masterpiece" by many, The Atrocity Exhibition practically lies outside of any literary tradition. Part science fiction, part eerie historical fiction, part pornography, its characters adhere to no rules of linearity or stability. This reissued edition features an introduction by William S Burroughs, extensive text commentary by Ballard and four additional stories. Of specific interest are the illustrations by underground cartoonist and professional medical illustrator Phoebe Gloeckner. Her ultra-realistic images of eroticism and destruction add an important dimension to Ballard's text. --Joaquim della Mirandella




Rating: - I hope I'm not thick
I think I'm a pretty bright sort of a bloke. I got a good degree in English Literature from a very respectable university. I'm pretty knowledgable and can grasp fairly difficult concepts. But I'm not ashamed to admit (I am ashamed really) that this book floored me.

I appreciate it is experimental and understand that it probably gives great pleasure to those who "get" what Ballard is doing. But it is extremely obscure, written in a highly-florid, conceptual style and I found it unreadable. ... Read More

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Rating: - The 'atrocious' exhibition
'The Atrocity Exhibition' is a very apt title, because I have never read a more atrocious book. 'Experimental' translated means 'Avant-Garde', He mentions rape, torture, paedophilia, people who are aroused by Vietnam's child napalm victims and people who are aroused by viewing car crashes. As if this weren't bad enough, he writes the book in a willfully obscure, difficult, awkward style - hence the 'experimental' label.

Essentially what Ballard is trying to do is dazzle us with his expansive vocabulary, ... Read More

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Rating: - Truly visionary
Will Self describes this book, on the cover, as representing "the zenith of the experimental novel in English. Ballard's marginalia are a tour de force, a wholy original work in their own right."

This annotated edition with an excellent introduction by William Burroughs and Ballard's own chapter notes, written with over twenty years hindsight, further enhances a novel that already made Ballard stand out as one of greatest soothsayers of the twentieth century.

Obsessively documenting his obsessions ... Read More

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Rating: - Best book I ever read!
Yes, this is a difficult and complex book. Yes, it is dense, cryptic and multi-layered. Yes, it lacks a clear linear plot. Yes, it is packed with complex and repetitive images. It is also Ballard's finest work, a collection of frames from a film that evokes all the obsessions and symbols of the latter years of the twentieth century.
And to answer the last reviewer, yes, I think it is great.

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Rating: - amazing - the geometry of virtual un-reality
ballard himself said that every paragraph of this frightening, obscure and obtuse puzzle-fiction is a condensed novel. it's true and puts most other writers to shame: experimental and totally transgressive.
the imagination and wayward-intelligence behind the ideas here might lead you to think it was written by an maverick escapee of a mental asylum (maybe travis, trabert, talbolt or traven)but ballard, like orwell and huxley, knows exactly what he's talking about.
there's abandoned airfields where recreations ... Read More

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