The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of J. G. Ballard

Posted: April 24th, 2026 | No Comments »

Sci-Fi writers Christopher Priest and Nina Allan’s new biography of JG Ballard…The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of J. G. Ballard (Bloomsbury)….

Unsurprisingly for a bio by two sci-fi writers The Illuminated man focuses largely on Ballard’s novels and his hyper-surrealism that really redefined British sci-fi in the decades after WW2. The authors cover Ballard’s Shanghai origins and time in Lunghwa Internment Camp.

FYI: here’s my take on the influences of Shanghai on Ballard’s later writing from the Los Angeles Review of Books in 2021 – Ballardian Dystopias in Wartime Shanghai

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