Never before published in America, this revelatory autobiography—hailed as “fascinating [and] amazingly lucid” (<em>Guardian</em>)—charts the remarkable story of James Graham Ballard, a man described by Martin Amis as “the most original English writer of the last century.” Beginning with his Shanghai childhood, <em>Miracles of Life</em> guides us from the deprivations of Lunghua Camp during World War II, which provide the back story for his best-selling <em>Empire of the Sun</em>, to his arrival in war-torn England and his emergence as “the ideal chronicler of our disturbed modernity” (<em>Observer</em>). With prose of characteristic precision, Ballard movingly recalls his first attempts at science fiction, the 1970 American pulping of <em>The Atrocity Exhibition</em>—which sprang from his fascination with JFK conspiracy theories—and his life as a single father after the premature death of his wife. “This book should make yet more converts to a cause that Ballard’s devotees have been pleading for years” (<em>Independent</em>).