[1] A car accident leaves Robert Maitland, a wealthy architect in the midst of concealing his affair with a colleague, stranded in a large area of derelict land created by several intersecting motorways.

Along the way he encounters other inhabitants of the median strip, which he comes to call "The Island," who are a teenaged sex worker who hides out in an abandoned air-raid bunker and an acrobat who became mentally disabled in an accident and now salvages car parts for bizarre shamanic rituals.

The novel heavily references Shakespeare's The Tempest, with its remote island setting, its stranded inhabitants, the belief in sorcery and its Caliban character, the unstable acrobat.

[3] Bale, who played the lead in Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Ballard's Empire of the Sun, apparently is no longer attached to the project.

[4] In June 2013, BBC Radio 4 aired an hour-long adaptation by Graham White, directed by Mary Peate, featuring Andrew Scott as Maitland, Georgia Groome as Jane and Ben Crowe as Proctor.