Matchbook Classics Box Set

by J.G. Ballard, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Penelope Fitzgerald

Collected here in a stunning box set, these ten books novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography that make up our Matchbook Classics series, a beautifully redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. In the mid-twentieth century, the matchbox industry was booming. Companies had to stand out, so they began commissioning designers and illustrators to create works of graphic art for their labels. Despite its limitations, the tiny canvas did not inhibit artists foxes skipping through Polish forests, celebrations of Russia s space race successes and orchards coming into blossom. These micro-masterpieces serve as the inspiration for the  4th Estate Matchbook Classics series.
 
The ten books novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography are some of the best loved and most admired that 4th Estate has published. Revolutions, mental illness, a vicarage upbringing, families caught in civil war, soldiers in Vietnam and a man who can only communicate by blinking his left these books display a full range of the human experience and thrillingly bring it to life. Each can be considered one of the great books of our time, as unique as the matchbox that inspired its cover. Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Things They Carried by Tim O Brien
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
Bad Blood by Lorna Sage

4032 pages, Paperback

Published April 4, 2019

About the author

James Graham "J. G." Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Ballard came to be associated with the New Wave of science fiction early in his career with apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) novels such as The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964), and The Crystal World (1966). In the late 1960s and early 1970s Ballard focused on an eclectic variety of short stories (or "condensed novels") such as The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which drew closer comparison with the work of postmodernist writers such as William S. Burroughs. In 1973 the highly controversial novel Crash was published, a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism; the protagonist becomes sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car crashes. The story was later adapted into a film of the same name by Canadian director David Cronenberg.

While many of Ballard's stories are thematically and narratively unusual, he is perhaps best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy's experiences in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War as it came to be occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. Described as "The best British novel about the Second World War" by The Guardian, the story was adapted into a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg.

The literary distinctiveness of Ballard's work has given rise to the adjective "Ballardian", defined by the Collins English Dictionary as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments." The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballard's work as being occupied with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".