The Drought

J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. He published his first novel, The Drowned World, in 1961. His 1984 bestseller 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 memoir Miracles of Life was published in 2008. J.G. Ballard died in 2009.

Signs of Life is M. John Harrison’s eighth novel. His fifth, In Viriconium, was nominated for the Guardian Fiction Prize; his sixth, Climbers, won the Boardman Tasker Award in 1989. He has written for several periodicals, including the Spectator, and currently reviews new fiction for the Times Literary Supplement.

‘A cross between John Fowles and Iris Murdoch.’ Independent on Sunday

‘A blazing original. A great imaginer, and an extraordinary writer.’ Clive Barker

‘Uncommon brilliance.’ TLS