BYE BY JAPAN, HELLO CHINA (ho ho ho) So … thanks to our Japanese friend, Haruki Murakami, for his words and his disappearing heroine. We now move to THE CITY AND THE CITY by China Miéville. China has been likened to Kafka, Orwell and Phillip K. Dick. His innovative, genre-busting novels and non-fiction have helped redefine fantasy and science fiction for our times – and that’s a quote. The City & the City combines what WIKI describes as weird fiction with the police procedural. It was written as a gift for Miévilles terminally-ill mother, who was a fan of the latter genre. It has won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, Arthur C. Clarke Award, World Fantasy Award, BSFA Award and Kitschies Red Tentacle; tied with Paolo Bacigalupis The Windup Girl for the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and been nominated for a Nebula Award and John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Whatevs! In THE GUARDIAN China said, The funny thing is that for my least fantastic book, it started out of a very generic idea: a city that was inhabited by two different species, one a group of giants who were about three times the size of everyone else. You would have to have this concatenation of completely different buildings within the same city. That got me thinking about the political ramifications of two completely different communities living together. Slowly the fantastic started to bleed out, and the sociopolitical remained. “Fiction of the new century” is how Neil Gaiman describes this book and, for the Mrs Underhill Book Club FBook users, you’ll know Neil is also an author I’m keen to read. [theguardian/books/booksblog/2013/sep/09/not-booker-prize-neil-gaiman-ocean-lane] Some links: • themillions/2010/09/how-china-mieville-got-me-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-monsters.html • theguardian/childrens-books-site/2012/sep/20/china-mieville-interview • theguardian/books/2009/may/30/china-mieville-fiction • independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-city-and-the-city-by-china-miville-1715670.html • youtube/watch?v=GaaFun09At0 Next meeting of the Mrs Underhill Book Club is Wednesday 28 May. Please holler if you would like to nominate the next book. Also if you were someone that wanted to host this year, just holler for the July club. Love your work – and your baking. Mrs U
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 02:18:51 +0000
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