The Crystal World

“Magical and not to be missed,” a dystopian novel of a man traveling through Africa who encounters an apocalyptic forest heralding environmental collapse (The Guardian).

Through a “leaking” of time, the West African jungle starts to crystallize. Trees metamorphose into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses. Most flee the area in terror, afraid to face a catastrophe they cannot understand.

But some, dazzled and strangely entranced, remain to drift through this dreamworld forest: a doctor in pursuit of his ex-mistress, an enigmatic Jesuit wielding a crystal cross and a tribe of lepers searching for Paradise.

In this tour de force of the imagination, J.G. Ballard transports the reader into one of his most unforgettable landscapes.

“Beautifully rendered . . . Ballard the poet in full ecstatic blast.” —Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange