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
About the Author
J. G. Ballard is the author of more than twenty novels and short-story collections. He lives in Shepperton, England.