The Last Days of New Paris

[sinister42]

Just came out today and I bought it. Absolutely blown away by the first few pages. I'm both a Francophile and a huge fan of surrealism, so it's as if this book were written specifically for me.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Looks fantastic, but not sure it is available yet…? Looks as though all the Goodreads reviews are ARCs. Sounds like classic CM, though…

 

[sinister42]

It's out in the USA - surely it's out in the UK as well.

 

[Vertigo]

Available on Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0180SQC32/?tag=brite-21

 

[Caliban]

It's only out for us in the UK in February. So I'm a bit reliant on American reviews. Tell us what you think

 

[sinister42]

Wait, the UK release isn't coming out until next February? Why? Surely you can order a copy on Amazon or suchlike.

The book is more distinctly and deliberately Surrealist (big "S" used advisedly) than Mieville's other works.

The city of Paris, under siege by the Nazis, is saturated by "Manifs," living manifestations of surrealist ideas, paintings, exquisite corpses, impossibilities. I really can't get into it further with my own words and do the book justice.

Here's a brief passage:

"In the shallows and the mud of the Ile aux Cygnes, human hands crawl under spiral shells. A congregation of Seine sharks thrash up dirty froth below the Pont de Grenelle. Rolling and rising, they eye him as he approaches and bite at the bobbing corpse of a horse. In front of each dorsal fin, each shark is hollow-backed, with a canoe seat..."

"Jags of ruin, a fallen outline. Framed against the flat bright sky to the north-east, the Eiffel Tower looms. The tower's steepling top half dangles where it has always been, where the Pont d'Iena meets the Quai Branly, above ordered gardens, but halfway to the earth the metal ends. There's nothing tethering it to the ground. It hangs, truncated. A flock of the brave remaining birds of Paris swoop below the stumps of its struts forty storeys up. The half-tower points with a long shadow."

I mean...

 

[Caliban]

I think it's the publisher. And yes I could probably order a US edition from your version of Amazon but I prefer to wait for the UK version.

Sounds really good.

 

[Vertigo]

I think it's the publisher. And yes I could probably order a US edition from your version of Amazon but I prefer to wait for the UK version.

Sounds really good.

As I posted and linked above Amazon.co.uk has it for sale now. It's definitely not on 'pre order' and it specifies the publication date as 9th August.

 

[Brian G Turner]

As I posted and linked above Amazon.co.uk has it for sale now. It's definitely not on 'pre order' and it specifies the publication date as 9th August.

Actually, I'm seeing it as not yet available as well, except as a pre-order item until Feb 2017. Amazon are messin' with you.

 

[Caliban]

Yep it's available for pre-order both kindle and physical for Feb 2017

 

[Vertigo]

Ah no you're right. How bizarre; Amazon has now changed and is showing not available for purchase now. Yet it definitely was offering me the purchase option when I posted that link as I was hovering over the buy with one click button before I decided I'd wait until the price comes down with the paperback as I'm unlikely to find time to read it for a while yet anyway. So it was definitely there. Very strange...

 

[sinister42]

Well I finished reading it. Amazing. Definitely Mieville's best work yet, and shows a really deep knowledge of the surrealist movement, its main actors and thinkers, and their ideas and philosophies. I'm just...gobsmacked by this book, to be honest.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I might give this a go. i was talking about it yesterday with a Waterstones friend of mine, we read together a couple of CM's early works. I did not like Kraken, I loved The City & The City, and couldn't get in to Embassytown at all. Since then, I've bought nothing of his, though I was tempted by the Rail/mole/moby Dick one. But this Surrealist novel does sound good…

 

[Terence Blake]

I kept thinking of Aliette de Bodard’s THE HOUSE OF SHATTERED WINGS while reading China Miéville’s THE LAST DAYS OF NEW PARIS. The link may seem tenuous, as the styles and stories are very different. They have in common the poetic evocation and reworking of a magic-saturated Paris after a devastating and reality-distorting event, the Magic War for THE HOUSE OF SHATTERED WINGS and the surrealist S-Blast for THE LAST DAYS OF NEW PARIS. The novel awakens our sense of wonder with the explosion of imagery, of erudition, and of poetry that the book contains. The novel itself embodies what it describes: the surrealist Resistance to the Nazi occupation of Paris has led to the creation of a surrealist bomb, whose explosion produces an "S-Blast" that has liberated a myriad of "manifestations", impossible entities freed from surrealist painting and sculptures to wreak havoc on the Nazi occupying forces. It is at once a masterfully told story and an inspiring manifesto, an ode to the liberating power of poetic fantasy against the micro-fascisms of everyday life, and to the creations, and the lives, of those who are steeped in it.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Wooh! I'd better check this novel out…

 

[HareBrain]

Yes, @Terence Blake's summary sold it to me. Just a shame I have to wait till next year.

 

[leoman1]

On my to-read list. Hopefully, I'll get to it soon as I do like most of his work.

 

[alloycircus]

Any similar novels? The mixture of Surrealism, the occult and 40s atmosphere has me spell-bound.