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Crash

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Crash

By: J. G. Ballard
Narrated by: Alastair Sill
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About this listen

The definitive cult, post-modern novel – a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism.

When our narrator smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, his sense of sexual possibilities in the world around him becomes detached. As he begins an affair with the dead man's wife, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes. Then he encounters Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the expressway, who has gathered around him a collection of alienated crash victims and experiments with a series of erotic atrocities, each more sinister than the last. But Vaughan craves the ultimate crash – a head-on collision of blood, semen, engine coolant and iconic celebrity.When our narrator smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, his sense of sexual possibilities in the world around him becomes detached. As he begins an affair with the dead man's wife, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes. Then he encounters Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the expressway, who has gathered around him a collection of alienated crash victims and experiments with a series of erotic atrocities, each more sinister than the last. But Vaughan craves the ultimate crash – a head-on collision of blood, semen, engine coolant and iconic celebrity.

©2011 J. G. Ballard (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic Reviews

'A work of very powerful originality. Ballard is amongst our finest writers of fiction.' Anthony Burgess

'One of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced, the possessor of a terrifying and exhilarating imagination.' Guardian

'Ballard has issued a series of bulletins on the modern world of almost unerring prescience. Other writers describe; Ballard anticipates.' Will Self

'Britain's number one living novelist.' John Sutherland, Sunday Times

All stars
Most relevant  
There’s usually nothing I hate more than lecherous old men writing sex novels, but the old Ballardian dazzle dazzle makes this the exception that makes the rule. High Rise is better, but it’s still one of his best!

Don’t make me say “ballardian”

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It just rambled on and on. Happier to provide you a perverted word salad and attempting any kind of decent narrative. I'm convinced you could fit the entire story into a blurb on a postage stamp if you take out the lovingly described spillage of semen.

Ugh

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The narrator was excellent (it wasn't the author, ha).
The content is just vile trash though. Grasping for shock value, boring, sexed up rubbish.

Yuck.

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