num_pages: 176
description: Driving home from his office in central London, Robert Maitland, a 35-year-old architect, is involved in a sudden accident when his car has a a blow-out. It swerves off the embankment and lands in a small traffic island that lies beneath three converging motorways. Maitland is shaken but uninjured; he sets off to climb the embankment and call for help. But his real ordeal is now about to begin. For no one will stop for him, and he finds that he is marooned like a latter-day Crusoe on this concrete island in the centre of one of the world's largest and most modern cities. His only resources are the contents of his crashed car and his own reserves of strength and will.During the long and terrifying struggle to survive, Maitland finds himself being tested both physically and psychologically. Gradually he discovers the ambiguous motives that led him to be marooned on this island. In his determination to survive and to dominate the island, Maitland recognizes elements of his isolated character - his solitary childhood, his neutral marriage and his ruthlessness with himself. These conflicting strains are resolved in the final extraordinary climax of the novel.Concrete Island is, above all, a sustained and powerful drama; on one level a tense and exciting narrative of a man's fight for life on the modern equivalent of a desert island, and on a deeper level a wrenching account of a man's recognition of hat he is. It is also an ironic and penetrating comment on the unexpected perils that await all of us as we drive across the concrete landscape of the late-twentieth century.
language: English
title: Concrete island
titlecomplete: Concrete island
characters: Robert Maitland
genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Thriller, British Literature, Horror, Literature, Novels, Contemporary, 20th Century, Dystopia
ratings_count: 8986
places: London, England
publisher: Jonathan Cape