BALLARD, J.G. Crash. London: Jonathan Cape. 1973.
8vo. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt to spine with publisher's device to foot; stylised dust jacket with wrap-around image designed by Bill Botten; pp. [vi], 7-224; fine.
First UK edition.
"Crash is, hands-down, the most repulsive book I’ve ever come across", wrote the reviewer at the New York Times when this cult literary classic was first published in 1973. Difficult to categorise, it is ostensibly about symphorophilia, or car-crash sexual fetishism, its characters getting turned on by staging and participating in real car-crashes. Few writers could be more relevant to the world today than the prescient J.G. Ballard, and this "psychopathic hymn" is one of his greatest achievements.
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