Critic Reviews
Good
Based on 11 reviews on
"Beauty will be convulsive. . . ."
1941. 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 strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever.
1950. 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. 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.
But Sam is being hunted. And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties--to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself.
Praise for The Last Days of New Paris
"Beautiful, stunningly realized . . . [The Last Days of New Paris] is a brief vacation in alien latitudes, a midnight layover in an imaginary place."--NPR
"A thoughtful, highbrow novella . . . 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
"[A] testament to the necessary, progressive power of art . . . Both moving and disturbingly timely."--Newsday
"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
"An extraordinarily original work that foregrounds Mieville's considerable ingenuity and innovation."--The Millions
"Hauntingly poetic, strangely beautiful, and erratically intense."--San Francisco Book Review
"Dazzling . . . quite a feat."--The Guardian
Prince of #Serendipity. cf: #Synchronicity, #Poetry ♋ #publicsector #mystic #poet "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."
@MTCicero2 @ThouArtThat @andrea_wulf That and the work of Daumal and others in their journal 𝑳𝒆 𝑮𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑱𝒆𝒖 via China Miéville’s ‘The Last Days of New Paris’ would make a great graphic ‘what if’ novel … https://t.co/wQ2T4YpU8Z
"A thoughtful, highbrow novella . . . 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
"[A] testament to the necessary, progressive power of art . . . Both moving and disturbingly timely."--Newsday
"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
"An extraordinarily original work that foregrounds Mieville's considerable ingenuity and innovation."--The Millions
"Hauntingly poetic, strangely beautiful, and erratically intense."--San Francisco Book Review
"Dazzling . . . quite a feat."--The Guardian