A voyage to a mysterious forest leads its hero to a violent yet beautiful fate
I first read JG Ballard’s The Crystal World 10 years ago on a beach in Suffolk, the glare of the sea in my eyes. I looked out to the water, and the reflection of the sun on the waves blinded me. The wind dropped, the reeds on the dunes stopped waving and everything slowed down.
The Crystal World was published in 1966 and forms part of a post-apocalyptic triptych that also includes The Drowned World and The Drought. Although it contains similar tropes to those two novels – environmental catastrophe, Freudian thanatos, inner space – The Crystal World is a much more beautiful, and more violent work.
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