Concrete Island pays twisted homage to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe . Newly reissued with an introduction from Neil Gaiman. On a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament soon turns into horror as Maitland--a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe--realizes that, despite evidence of other inhabitants, this doomed terrain has become a mirror of his own mind. Seeking the dark outer rim of the everyday, Ballard weaves private catastrophe into an intensely specular allegory. About the Author: J. G. Ballard is the author of numerous books, including Empire of the Sun , the underground classic Crash , and The Kindness of Women . He is revered as one of the most important writers of fiction to address the consequences of twentieth-century technology. He died in 2009.