num_pages: 176
description: On a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament soon turns into horror as Maitland—a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe—realizes that, despite evidence of other inhabitants, this doomed terrain has become a mirror of his own mind. Seeking the dark outer rim of the everyday, Ballard weaves private catastrophe into an intensely specular allegory.
language: English
title: Concrete Island
titlecomplete: Concrete Island
characters: Robert Maitland
genres: Thriller, Fiction, 20th Century, Contemporary, British Literature, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Horror, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 8982
places: London, England
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux