Synopses & Reviews
"At Port-la-Nouvelle, on the parched terrain of central Africa, Dr. Mallory watches as his clinic fails and dreams of discovering a third Nile that will make the Sahara bloom. When there is a trickle on the local airstrip, and soon a river, the obsessed Mallory claims it as his own creation. Joined by Noon, a silent adolescent girl who as a child ran with the local guerrillas; Professor Sanger, a documentary filmmaker with a fading reputation; and Nora Warrer, the widow of a Rhodesian veterinary surgeon, the remains of whose menagerie flourish exotically amid the land's new fertility, Mallory sets out for the river's source.
The Day of Creation is a metaphysical adventure story dealing with complex themes--the life-giving qualities of water, the cold eye of television, obsession, love--all set in a dream Africa, as if hallucinated by Joseph Conrad." -Angela Carter
Review
"All the surreal, voluptuous intensity of a fever dream." -
The New Yorker"Ballard has successfully created a new myth, a late-20th-century saga of distracted humans making a lonely voyage through time and the river to the well-spring of their parched imaginations." -Paul Gray, Time
"The Day of Creation is a metaphysical adventure story dealing with complex themes--the life-giving qualities of water, the cold eye of television, obsession, love--all set in a dream Africa, as if hallucinated by Joseph Conrad.". -Angela Carter
Review
“
The Day of Creation is a metaphysical adventure story dealing with complex themes—the life-giving qualities of water, the cold eye of television, obsession, love—all set in a dream Africa, as if hallucinated by Joseph Conrad.”—Angela Carter
“Ballard has successfully created a new myth, a late-20th-century saga of distracted humans making a lonely voyage through time and the river to the well-spring of their parched imaginations.” —Time
“A near-classic adventure.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Lyrical, hallucinatory...virtuosic...Few authors today can approach Ballards gift for placing his reader in a perfectly realized hypnotic world.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“The Day of Creation puts Ballard up with Golding, Forester, and Conrad.” —The Miami Herald
Synopsis
At Port-la-Nouvelle, on the parched terrain of central Africa, Dr. Mallory watches as his clinic fails and dreams of discovering a third Nile that will make the Sahara bloom. When there is a trickle on the local airstrip, and soon a river, the obsessed Mallory claims it as his own creation and sets out for the rivers source.
About the Author
J. G. Ballard is the author of numerous books, including
Empire of the Sun, the underground classic
Crash, Concrete Island and
The Kindness of Women. He is revered as one of the most important writers of fiction to address the consequences of twentieth-century technology. He lives in England.