8vo. Pp. [viii], 392. Printed wraps.
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Best Book Prize (Eurasia Region). A vision of corporate dystopia set on the French Riviera and modelled on the high-tech business parks of Antibes-les-Pins and Sophia-Antipolis.
In an online interview published in 2000, in Spike Magazine, Ballard presciently contended that the book's main theme "is that in order to keep us happy and spending more [...] then capitalism is going to have to [keep on] tapping darker strains in our characters." A companion piece to his earlier Cocaine Nights (1996). "The first essential novel of the 21st century." –The Independent