Mieville follows his award-winning THE CITY AND THE CITY with a wild jaunt through a fantasy London chockfull of quirks, magic, assassins and teeming like Dickens with a multitude of human and non-human protagonists. The disappearance of a giant squid from the Natural History Museum sets in motion a series of events each more fantastic than the one before and the novel carries the reader in its wake on a journey full of shock and awe. An author at the top of his form.
Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears? For curator Billy Harrow it's the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. It might just be that the creature he's been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it's a god. A god that someone is hoping will end the world.
China Miéville lives and works in London. He is three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award (Perdido Street Station, Iron Counciland The City & The City) and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice (Perdido Street Station and The Scar). The City & The City, an existential thriller, was published in 2009 to dazzling critical acclaim and drew comparison with the works of Kafka and Orwell (The Times) and Philip K. Dick (Guardian). His most recent novel, Kraken, was published in 2010.
In 2010 China Miéville won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award for his novel The City and the City, the first time in its history an author has won it three times.
Maxim Jakubowski's view on PERDIDO STREET STATION... British author Miéville is one of the most adept practitioners when it comes to creating imaginary worlds and cities which are both alien and recognisable as an extrapolation of the world we live in. The urban and gothic New Crobuzon is a harbour for humans, mutants, magicians and every mysterious species under the sun. Old-fashioned storytelling taken off the leash and exhaustively inventive.
