Crash

The definitive cult, post-modern novel – a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism. When our narrator smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, his sense of sexual possibilities in the world around him becomes detached. As he begins an affair with the dead man's wife, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes. Then he encounters Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the expressway, who has gathered around him a collection of alienated crash victims and experiments with a series of erotic atrocities, each more sinister than the last. But Vaughan craves the ultimate crash - a head-on collision of blood, semen, engine coolant and iconic celebrity. First published in 1973 'Crash' remains one of the most shocking novels of the second half of the twentieth century and was made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenburg. First published in 1973, this novel provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a 'TV scientist', experiments with erotic atrocities among crash victims, each more sinister than the last: ultimately, he craves a union of blood, semen and engine coolant in a head-on collision with Elizabeth Taylor. This novel opens with the narrator in hospital after a serious car crash in which he killed a doctor's husband. When he leaves hospital, he revisits the scene of the crash, and meets the doctor. They begin an affair which involves sexual experiments on London motorways.