The Day of Creation

By J.G. Ballard

Book Overview

At Port-la-Nouvelle, on the parched terrain of central Africa, Dr. Mallory watches as his clinic fails and dreams of discovering a third Nile that will make the Sahara bloom. When there is a trickle on the local airstrip, and soon a river, the obsessed Mallory claims it as his own creation. Joined by Noon, a silent adolescent girl who as a child ran with the local guerrillas; Professor Sanger, a documentary filmmaker with a fading reputation; and Nora Warrer, the widow of a Rhodesian veterinary surgeon, the remains of whose menagerie flourish exotically amid the land's new fertility, Mallory sets out for the river's source.The Day of Creation is a metaphysical adventure story dealing with complex themes--the life-giving qualities of water, the cold eye of television, obsession, love--all set in a dream Africa, as if hallucinated by Joseph Conrad. -Angela Carter

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374135274
• ISBN13: 9780374135270
• Release Date: April 1988
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful imagery

What I liked best about this novel was the images that Ballard was able to evoke. To be honest, I started reading it and lost interest. I picked it up some years later and was hooked. He truly can create amazing pictures in the mind unlike most writers. It is perplexing to me to see a book like The Firm getting such good reviews and being read by millions when this one is hardly even a footnote, when this book is superior in just about every way. It is not his best. I would say Crystal World, High-Rise and The Drowned World are his best, but this is a very original novel.