J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. He published his first novel, The Drowned World, in 1961. His 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His memoir Miracles of Life was published in 2008.
J. G. Ballard died in 2009.
Martin Amis's novels include 'The Rachel Papers', 'Money', 'London Fields' and 'Time's Arrow'. He is also the author of two collections of essays, 'The Moronic Inferno' and 'Visiting Mrs Nabokov'. He lives in London.