Surprisingly enough, J.G. Ballard's High-Rise lost virtually none of its value in almost 40 years since its first publication in 1975. Indeed, this is a rare quality for a fiction novel, depicting in rather gruesome detail how a huge 40-storey apartment block of some two thousand people went violent, primitive, tribal, and cannibalistic. Lights go off, heat goes off, garbage chutes and elevators no longer work, and that's when bats, knives, metal chairs, home appliances and even bare hands come into play.

 

For an avid J.G. Ballard reader like yours truly (not sure that I deserve this “avid” description though, as I've read less than, I dunno, 15% of his books), it's encouraging to see how certain themes migrate through Ballard's body of work – from perverse mutilation of cars and limbs in his iconic Crash into no less exciting vandalism of a communal home and both mental and physical rape of its residents by its residents – or the air of the mass hysteria and clansmanship so similar to Ballard's last novel Kingdom Come, another must-read.