Book review: The Last Days of New Paris – a surreal masterpiece
Art meets the occult meets Fascism in China Mieville’s reimagining of oppression and resistance in Nazi-controlled France
by China Miéville
Del Rey
4.5 stars
Page for page, there is no one generating more utterly unfamiliar ideas than author China Miéville (Perdido Street Station, The City and the City) – and the glossary of monsters in his latest novel, The Last Days of New Paris, could support a full book for every entry.
There’s so much absurd beauty among the fauna in this story of surrealist art come to life in Nazi-occupied France, in fact, that the author’s subtler points about imagination and oppression arrive as a surprise during the pitched battle between the magical resistance and literally Hellish fascism at his book’s climax.
During the second world war, the story goes, magician Jack Parsons and a group of surrealists including André Breton and Yves Tanguy have a magical accident that the book’s heroes come to call the S-blast. It’s an occult explosion that results in the sort of horrifying unintended consequences in which Miéville specialises: the surrealists’ work becomes real and animated with magical force.