Paolo Lagorio Boeken

In High-Rise , Ballard once again attacks our uneasy truce with the artificial. Four futuristic high-rise apartment buildings have been built. Catering to the wealthy, these buildings are in fact enclosed worlds, featuring day-care, schooling, swimming pools and grocery stores. As the new tenants adjust to life aboard one of the high-rise complexes, violence escalates and members from adjacent floors break off into tribal factions that roam the corridors at night. It gets more frightening and visceral (if a bit predictable); High-Rise is the 21st century's Lord of the Flies , a sometimes profound statement on what we are doing with technology -- and what technology is doing to us. Additionally, it is a scathing commentary on leisure culture (a topic Ballard returns to in Cocaine Nights ). If you haven't yet read Ballard, High-Rise is a great starting point.

A family-revenge story and courtroom drama. A young man is brutally murdered and his distraught girlfriend is charged and brought to trial. Her aunt, about to take up a top job in the US Court of Appeals, decides to defend her, but it is the girl's first contact with her family for 20 years.