High-Rise is a literary fiction book by author J. G. Ballard.
British actor Tom Hiddleston, best known for his role as the villain Loki, and writer F. Scott Fitzgerald bring snappy acting and smooth voice to this acclaimed author J.G. Ballard. When a class war breaks out inside a luxury apartment complex, modern elevators turn violent battlefields and cocktail parties turn into looting raids on the floors of “enemies”.
Human society is plunged into violent reverse as once peaceful inhabitants, driven by primitive impulses, recreate a world ruled by the law of the jungle.
High-Rise is a wonderful book about how the increasing density of our cities can lead to mass insanity. The title’s high-rise is a super superstar project with a transforming apartment inaugurated in London, a fully autonomous designed building, with a supermarket, shops, swimming pool, gym gym and even school.
Noisy time passed, daily spare parts placement disputes because of noise, animals, children, parking space, use of elevators; everything is enhanced. The residents who gather in tribes have stories close by, with particular rivalry between those living on the luxurious top floors and the cheaper ones on the bottom floors. It all leads to anarchy and war on the floor, social collapse and beatings, invasion, death, rape, unjust violence and cannibalism.
The book is full of “ballardian” fantasies, imagining how the cyclopean building was actually built not to house people, but to hide them. A place where you can disconnect from society and unleash your primal territorial instincts and ownership. Where the animal inside you can be yourself.
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High-Rise
