High-Rise: A Novel
When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on "enemy" floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
I liked Ballard a lot when I was a teenager. I had barely even thought of him for 20 years before returning to this book. In the first 10 or so chapters, I was pleasantly reminded of what I liked about him - absurd yet realistic, psychology made tangibly symbolic, a very Delillo-like syntax, interesting concepts. But then he repeated himself. And repeated himself. And repeated. And repeated. It feels like a short story he didn't know how to develop into a novel, but he had a bunch of extra material so he just threw it together into a novel and never bothered to edit it. The first 128 pages or so are great. After that, it just keeps going over the same ideas constantly.
