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The Drought

By: J. G. Ballard
Narrated by: Jonathan Coote
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Publisher's Summary

By the best-selling author of Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes - the world is threatened by dramatic climate change in this highly acclaimed and influential novel. Water. Man’s most precious commodity is a luxury of the past. Radioactive waste from years of industrial dumping has caused the sea to form a protective skin strong enough to devastate the Earth it once sustained. And while the remorseless sun beats down on the dying land, civilisation itself begins to crack. Violence erupts and insanity reigns as the remnants of mankind struggle for survival in a worldwide desert of despair.

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.

©1984 J. G. Ballard (P)2014 Audible Studios

What listeners say about The Drought

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The Drought

This is an early Ballard book, I have never been able to read. Its really well narrated and is yet another excellent story of human survival with interesting characters some likeable, some very strange going on mad but all very believable, yet another excellent story.
Jennifer Baldwin morris

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Largely incoherent with flashes of psychological observation

The initial concept of a drought caused by pollution is strong, and the moments of psychological observation are keen. However, the whole is rather incoherent with regards to the world building and storyline.

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