Millennium People

From the author of Crash and Empire of the Sun, a rebellion comes to London's middle class in a novel that “seeks to illuminate our hearts of darkness” (Los Angeles Times).

When a bomb goes off at Heathrow Airport it looks like another random act of violence to psychologist David Markham. But then he discovers that his ex-wife Laura is among the victims. Following a police lead that suggests the explosion was a feat of domestic terrorism, Markham infiltrates London’s fringe protest movement.

The clandestine group aims to rouse London’s middle classes to anger and violence, to free them from the burdens of civic responsibility and the trappings of a consumer society. But when Markham becomes enamored with a professor who moonlights as a terrorist cell leader, he too gets caught up in the idealistic campaign spiraling rapidly out of control. Abandoning his original investigation, Markham gives his unyielding support to the uprising.

As widespread rioting erupts, a frenzied English populous begins destroying the very symbols that define their middle-class status. In an unnerving and prophetic ending, Millennium People becomes more than a novel; it becomes a shockingly plausible, deeply unsettling vision of society in collapse, one that, in the words of John Gray in the New Statesman, “dissects the perverse psychology that links terrorists with their innocent victims.”

“The most cosmically elegiac writer in literature . . . no one reading Ballard could doubt the tidal gravity of his intellect.” —Jonathan Lethem, New York Times Book Review

“Ballard is a British Philip K. Dick, heir to Conrad and H.G. Wells, in whose stories the present, taken to extremes, anticipates the future. . . . [A] bruisingly smart novel.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review