The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville

At least until their corps of wizards (Aleister Crowley makes an appearance here, as do Mengele, Robert Alesch, Hitler, natch) can cut some kind of deal in hell to gain power over Paris's manifestations. And the book leaps forward (and back, and forward again) between 1941 and a 1950 where the war is still on and Paris is encircled by Nazis with their guns pointed inward now, fighting just to make sure what's in there stays in there. Leonora Carrington's Amateur of Velocipedes is there, Odilon Redon's grinning spider, more. It is a bomb that, in its exploding, looses into the world the physical manifestations of Surrealism's greatest hits, and suddenly the streets of the City Of Light are alive with wolf-tables and exquisite corpses, with massive, violent monsters of the deep subconscious. So in 1941, though a series of accidents, poor choices and bad luck, a kind of bomb is detonated at a cafe. But that kind of thing is not, you know, required.īook Reviews China Mieville's 'Railsea': 'Moby-Dick' Remixedīut that alone would be too dull for a wild mind like Miéville's. Will you be at an advantage if you know a thing or two about Vichy France? If you understand something of the motivations of American spies behind the lines? If, on your fingers, you can count the names of Nazis and midcentury occultists and know their stats like they came on the back of baseball cards? Yes, absolutely.

I don't and I loved the vicious, weird little thing anyway. Will it help you going into Last Days if you've got a master's-level education in art history with a focus on French Surrealism? Maybe. It can blow your mind and chap your ass at the same time, but if you're able to cool out your ego, shut up and listen a little, you're almost guaranteed to walk out again smarter. No one likes a smarty-pants, but sometimes that kind of thing - that rubbing up against the very smart and very committed - can be both infuriating and illuminating. Have you ever been to a party where you knew, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that everyone was smarter than you? Like maybe you accidentally wandered into some meeting of past Nobel winners, a MENSA cocktail hour where no one could talk about anything but his IQ, a conclave of artists who spoke so completely in their own cant that it sounded to your ear like code?Ĭhina Miéville's newest novel, The Last Days Of New Paris, is exactly that, but in book form.Īnd if there's a way that I can say that and yet mean it as a compliment, that's exactly what I'm doing here. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Last Days of New Paris Author China Miéville

The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville