Product Description

The remarkable bestseller from one of the giants of modern British literature -- at once an engrossing mystery and an unnerving vision of a society coming to terms with a life of unlimited leisure. When Charles Prentice arrives in Spain to investigate his brother's involvement in the death of five people in a fire in the upmarket coastal resort of Estrella de Mar, he gradually discovers that beneath the civilised, cultured surface of this exclusive enclave for Britain's retired rich there flourishes a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex . What starts as an engrossing mystery develops into a mesmerising novel of ideas -- a dazzling work of the imagination from one of Britain's most original and controversial novelists -- author of 'Empire of the Sun' and 'Crash'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14174 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
'The arrival of a new Ballard novel has become a literary event. He is one of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced, the possessor of a terrifying and exhilarating imagination -- and a national treasure.' Guardian 'Britain's number one living novelist. This adds a glinting new facet to his achievement -- Ballard, detective-novelist extraordinary.' Sunday Times 'One of the few world-class British writers alive today.' Literary Review 'As thrillingly wired as ever! dazzlingly original.' Independent 'Utterly compulsive.' Sunday Telegraph

About the Author
J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller 'Empire of the Sun' won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg. His controversial novel 'Crash' has recently been made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg.

Customer Reviews

Cocaine Nights is snort to be sniffed at.
What people are failing to see about Ballard is that his novels remind or inform us that below the surface there can often be some heavy stuff shifting about and 'Cocaine Nights' explores this fully. Set in what seems at first to be a bland Spanish ex-pat resort, we follow Charles Prentice who arrives to clear his brother of a murder he quite clearly did not commit, yet has admitted to.
At first Prentice is disgusted by the amoral characters he comes across, who seem to be middle class facists with no sense of right or wrong, but gradually they suck him into their world and he becomes a clone of his brother.
The whole of the end of the 20th century is here: sex, guns, drugs, crime and neck braces. This is a cable TV, mobile phone, Rolex watch dream gone horribly wrong, which puts forward the original idea that we are becoming obsessed with leisure and sun loungers and are becomimg lethargic if not catatonic. Lethargic to such a degree that crime as a means of excitement is justified if it wakes people up and gets them talking to each other. It's beautiful, scary stuff.
I would also recommend 'High Rise' by the same author and his examination of a possible future within fortified leisure cities, 'Supe-Cannes'.

Unmissable vivisection of the expatriate dream
Ballard is a vivisector of contemporary culture, and he has rarely been so close to the mark than here. Cocaine Nights shows how the world Ballard has always written about - drained swimming pools; languid, psychotic socialites; abandoned hotels - has finally come true on the coast of Spain, where bored expats, desperate for sensation, turn to sex, drugs and finally murder to alleviate the boredom of the life they always dreamed of. Blending cutting social analysis with a well-plotted thriller and an unforgettable central character (a violent, promiscuous, coke-snorting tennis coach) Cocaine Nights is a book to read on holiday - and to make you long for home.

Good, but not quite at his best...
Crime inspires the bloated middle-class haven of Estrella de Mar, waking its inhabitants from a permanent state of poolside lethargy. The plot is detective genre and maybe a little formulaic but the twists and turns keep things moving towards an explosive climax.

The moody, stripped down prose and recurring Ballardian motifs will please his fans. Maybe the characters aren't quite his best, but of course, this is Ballard, and the agency of individuals is subsumed in the weirdness of this amoral playground.

Haunting, disturbed, prophetic.