Crash

Format:	Paperback 208 pages

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Synopsis

The cult status of "Crash" has intensified since its original publication in 1973, making it a classic of underground literature. In this hallucinatory novel, the car provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a 'TV scientist', experiments with erotic atrocities among crash victims, each more sinister than the last: ultimately, he craves a union of blood, semen and engine coolant in a head-on collision with Elizabeth Taylor.

Book details

Published
19/01/1995

Publisher
Vintage

ISBN
9780099334910

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UK Kirkus review

In my opinion Crash is the finest post-war, avant-garde British novel. Indeed, I would argue that it's almost the last one as well. Ostensibly the story of a road-accident victim who becomes embroiled in a sinister sado-masochistic cult, the members of which stage car crashes in order to get their kicks, Crash is in fact a profound critique of that aspect of modernity the author has so pithily described as 'the Death of Affect'. Ballard writes about a world without feeling, dominated by stylization, media and the cult of celebrity. It remained fresh, powerful and shocking. And, of course, it was amazingly prescient. Review by Will Self, whose books include 'Great Apes' (Kirkus UK)