The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville

Oh, and the forces of Hell are also involved in this battle for Paris. Imagine a New Paris transformed in 1941, by 'virtue' of an occultish weapon to fight the Nazis, into a ghetto where Nazi's and French Resistance continue their battles into the 50s along side Surreal artist and Surreal art that has been made living. “Dazzling.quite a feat.” ( The Guardian)Ĭan it live before it dies? - China Miéville, The Last Days of New Paris As a reader who is drawn to art as much as to books, Miéville novella came as a messy, strange treat.

“Hauntingly poetic, strangely beautiful, and erratically intense.” ( San Francisco Book Review) “An extraordinarily original work that foregrounds Mieville’s considerable ingenuity and innovation.” ( The Millions) “A novel both unhinged and utterly compelling, a kind of guerrilla warfare waged by art itself, combining both meticulous historical research and Miéville’s unparalleled inventiveness.” ( Chicago Tribune) Both moving and disturbingly timely.” ( Newsday) “ testament to the necessary, progressive power of art. Miéville’s self-assured style offers up a strong sense of humanity, while the strange Surrealist monsters give Last Days a fun and complementary mad-science component.” ( USA Today) is a brief vacation in alien latitudes, a midnight layover in an imaginary place.” (NPR) And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties - to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself. To escape the city, he must join forces with Sam, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins, and make common cause with a powerful, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse.īut Sam is being hunted. A lone surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts - and by the forces of hell. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. In the chaos of wartime Marseille, American engineer - and occult disciple - Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including surrealist theorist André Breton. In The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville entwines true historical events and people with his daring, uniquely imaginative brand of fiction, reconfiguring history and art into something new. A thriller of war that never was - of survival in an impossible city - of surreal cataclysm.

The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville