He was born in Shanghai in 1930 and died in 2009. In his childhood he was imprisoned next to his family in a Japanese concentration camp, an experience he narrated in The Empire of the Sun. He returned to Britain in 1946 and studied medicine for two years and his practices at the dissecting tables marked him for good. His world is that of the postindustrial apocalypse. Among other books, he published Exhibition of atrocities, Crash (novel taken to the cinema by D. Cronenberg), Nights of cocaine, Terminal beach and The impossible man.