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Book Review: High-Rise by J. G. Ballard

Posted on March 22, 2016April 6, 2022
Topics: Novels / Fiction

Rating: 7.5/10.

This is kind of a dystopian sci-fi novel. It takes place in a large futuristic apartment building with thousands of people, mostly professionals. In the beginning everyone gets along fine, but tensions arise as tenants mistreat each other. Soon elevators and electricity stop working, garbage starts piling up, and eventually the whole place becomes a tribal hunter-gatherer nightmare. At the end most people are dead and dogs are being eaten for food.

I feel like this is social-political allegory, but can’t quite put my finger on what it’s parodying. In the book, the apartment is literally divided into lower, middle, and upper classes; things fall apart when they openly disrespect each other like by throwing drinks off balconies. That being said, taken literally the story doesn’t make any sense: why would a building full of young professionals randomly degenerate into savages? It can only be satire or just absurdist fiction then.

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