High-Rise

J. G. Ballard was born in raised in the Shanghai International Settlement—an extraterritorial enclave in Shanghai for British and American citizens. After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Ballard and his parents were forced to flee their suburban home to central Shanghai to avoid shelling. In 1941 the Japanese imperial army occupied the city and the International Settlement. In 1943, when Ballard was 13, they began interning Allied civilians, including Ballard and his parents. Together with his parents Ballard spent the rest of WWII—two years—in an internment camp outside of the city. Of experiencing war and internment as an adolescent, Ballard said:

The reassuring stage set that everyday reality in the suburban west presents to us is torn down; you see the ragged scaffolding, and then you see the truth beyond that […] I remember a lot of the casual brutality and beatings-up that went on—but at the same time we children were playing a hundred and one games all the time! (Livingstone, David B. “J. G. Ballard: Crash: Prophet with Honour.” Spike Magazine, 1999).

Ballard saw that beneath the veneer of civility lurks a violence more real than that “stage set” of everyday reality. He saw that “casual brutality” could exist alongside the everyday normality of his children’s games and school—people are capable of forging normal lives amid extremity. Just as Ballard and the other prisoners had something resembling a normal everyday routine in the camp, the characters in High-Rise carve a new normal from the rising chaos and brutality. This coexistence of violence and civility defines the novel.