The British author, JG Ballard, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 78.
In a career spanning over five decades, he was perhaps best known for his novel 'Empire of the Sun', which was later made into a film by director Steven Spielberg.
The book was based on his childhood imprisonment in wartime Shanghai.
Paying tribute, the author's agent, Margaret Hanbury, said: "His acute and visionary observation of contemporary life was distilled into a number of brilliant, powerful novels which have been published all over the world."
Born in Shanghai, Ballard went to study medicine at Cambridge University, but then decided to become a writer.
He described university as an "academic theme park where I was a reluctant extra".
His wife Mary died from pneumonia in 1964 and Ballard raised their three children alone.
Among his other books were: 'Crash', 'High Rise', 'The Kindness of Women', 'Super Cannes', 'Kingdom Come' and the autobiography 'Miracles of Life'.
