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Miracles Of Life
- Narrated by: Tim Pigott-Smith
- Length: 3 hrs and 19 mins
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Miracles Of Life
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Summary
'Miracles of Life' opens and closes in Shanghai, the city where J.G.Ballard was born, and where he spent the most of the Second World War interned with his family in a Japanese concentration camp.
J.G. Ballard was, for over fifty years, one of this country’s most significant writers. Beginning with the events that inspired his classic novel, “Empire of the Sun”, in this revelatory autobiography he charts the course of his astonishing life.
“Miracles of Life” takes us from the vibrant surroundings of pre-war Shanghai, to the deprivations and unexpected freedoms of Lunghua Camp, to Ballard’s arrival in a devastated Britain. Ballard recounts his first attempts at fiction and his part in the social and artistic revolutions of the 60s. He describes his friendships with figures as diverse as Kingsley Amis, Michael Moorcock and Eduardo Paolozzi alongside recollections of his domestic life in Shepperton – raising three children as a single father following the unexpected and premature death of his wife.
“Miracles of Life” is both a captivating narrative of the experiences that have shaped this extraordinary writer’s works, his distinctive outlook and his original visions of the future, and is also an account of a remarkable life.
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Critic reviews
"The long-awaited memoirs of one of the most interesting British writers." ( Sunday Times, Picks for 2008)
"Unobtrusively well-written...and fascinating." ( Literary Review)
What listeners say about Miracles Of Life
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- DB
- 22-09-19
Be ware, this version does not contain the whole book.
Sadly this version does not contain the whole book.
There’s a second version on audio that may have the whole book.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- D. C. Harold
- 26-04-21
Abridged, weirldy
Not a very long book so lord knows why it needed to be abridged, a fact that the product summary doesn't mention. The abridgement is clearly done with an eye towards the fans of Empire of the Sun and so includes the rather odd decision to basically lop off the final 20% of the story from the book. No abridgement of thost parts, they're just not there at all. Leaves the weird impression that for Ballard, life ended after the death of his wife and nothing else happened thereafter. A sad way to represent his final, and very moving, work.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- silke
- 22-08-24
Enjoyable until it just stops
Interesting until it just cuts off way before the end. It ruined it for me.
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