J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai. After internment in a civilian prison camp, 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. His controversial novel
Crash was made into a film by David Cronenberg. His autobiography
Miracles of Life was published in 2008, and a collection of interviews with the author,
Extreme Metaphors, was published in 2012. J. G. Ballard passed away in 2009.
Zadie Smith is the author of the novels
White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, and Swing Time, as well as a collection of essays,
Changing My Mind.