Millennium People

A novel by JG Ballard, and eligible for the 2003-4 OUSFG Award.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0006551610/

"Violent rebellion comes to London's middle classes in the extraordinary new novel from the author of Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes. When a bomb goes off at Heathrow it looks like just another random act of violence to psychologist David Markham. But then he discovers that his ex-wife Laura is among the victims. Acting on police suspicions, he starts to investigate London's fringe protest movements, falling in with a shadowy group based in the comfortable Thameside estate of Chelsea Marina. Led by a charismatic doctor, the group aims to rouse the docile middle classes to anger and violence, to free them from both the self-imposed burdens of civic responsibility and the trappings of a consumer society -- private schools, foreign nannies, health insurance and overpriced housing. Markham, seeking the truth behind Laura's death, is swept up in a campaign that spirals rapidly out of control. Every certainty in his life is questioned as the cornerstones of middle England become targets and growing panic grips the capital ...

I haven't read it, but it was endorsed by the administrator of the Arthur C Clarke Award, if that impresses anyone. -- NH