The Kindness of Women

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The Kindness of Women
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	J. G. Ballard
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Semi-autobiographical novel
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	1991
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	286 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-002-23750-4
Preceded by	Empire of the Sun

The Kindness of Women is a 1991 novel by British author J.G. Ballard. Although it is the sequel to his 1984 novel Empire of the Sun, The Kindness of Women presents the reader with a different version of the story told in the former novel (closer to Ballard's autobiography, Miracles of Life) in the first three chapters, then goes on telling a slightly fictionalised version of the author's life in the remaining chapters; the story ends in the late 1980s, after the making of Steven Spielberg's movie based on Empire of the Sun.

It was first published in the UK by HarperCollins and in the U.S. by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[edit] Plot introduction

The Kindness of Women is semi-autobiographical, and discusses Jim's departure from China, where he had been born and had been interned, to visit England, other parts of Europe and the USA.

Ballard has declared that the book is the story of his life "seen through the mirror of the fiction prompted by that life".

[edit] External links

• The Terminal Collection: JG Ballard First Editions

v • d • e Works by J. G. Ballard Novels: The Wind From Nowhere (1961) • The Drowned World (1962) • The Burning World (1964) • The Crystal World (1966) • The Atrocity Exhibition (1969) • Crash (1973) • Concrete Island (1974) • High Rise (1975) • The Unlimited Dream Company (1979) • Hello America (1981) • Empire of the Sun (1984) • The Day of Creation (1987) • Running Wild (1988) • The Kindness of Women (1991) • Rushing to Paradise (1994) • Cocaine Nights (1996) • Super-Cannes (2000) • Millennium People (2003) • Kingdom Come (2006) Short stories: "The Voices of Time" (1960) • "The Recognition" (1967) • "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968) Short story collections: The Voices of Time and Other Stories (1962) • Billennium (1962) • Passport to Eternity (1963) • The Four-Dimensional Nightmare (1963) • The Terminal Beach (1964) • The Impossible Man (1966) • The Venus Hunters (1967) • The Overloaded Man (1967) • The Disaster Area (1967) • The Day of Forever (1967) • Vermilion Sands (1971) • Chronopolis and Other Stories (1971) • Low-Flying Aircraft and Other Stories (1976) • The Best of J. G. Ballard (1977) • The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard (1978) • Myths of the Near Future (1982) • The Voices of Time (1985) • Memories of the Space Age (1988) • War Fever (1990) • The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard (2001) Essays & reviews A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996) • Miracles of Life (2008)