Cocaine Nights (Shortlisted For The Whitbread Novel Award)

Description:
The remarkable bestseller from one of the giants of modern British literature -- at once an engrossing mystery and an unnerving vision of a society coming to terms with a life of unlimited leisure. When Charles Prentice arrives in Spain to investigate his brother's involvement in the death of five people in a fire in the upmarket coastal resort of Estrella de Mar, he gradually discovers that beneath the civilised, cultured surface of this exclusive enclave for Britain's retired rich there flourishes a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex . What starts as an engrossing mystery develops into a mesmerising novel of ideas -- a dazzling work of the imagination from one of Britain's most original and controversial novelists -- author of 'Empire of the Sun' and 'Crash'.

Review:
'The arrival of a new Ballard novel has become a literary event. He is one of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced, the possessor of a terrifying and exhilarating imagination -- and a national treasure.' Guardian 'Britain's number one living novelist. This adds a glinting new facet to his achievement -- Ballard, detective-novelist extraordinary.' Sunday Times 'One of the few world-class British writers alive today.' Literary Review 'As thrillingly wired as ever! dazzlingly original.' Independent 'Utterly compulsive.' Sunday Telegraph

Author Biography:
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. 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 controversial novel 'Crash' has recently been made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg.