Perdido Street Station

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel Winner of the August Derleth Award for Best Novel Perdido Street Station is an imaginative urban fantasy thriller and the first of China Miéville's novels set in the sprawling world of Bas-Lag. The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the centre of its own bewildering world. Humans and mutants linger in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the rivers are sluggish with unnatural effluent, and factories and foundries pound into the night. For more than a thousand years, the parliament and its brutal militia have ruled over a vast array of workers and artists, spies, magicians, junkies and whores. Now a stranger has come, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand, and inadvertently something unthinkable is released. Soon the city is gripped by an alien terror - and the fate of millions depends on a clutch of outcasts on the run from lawmakers and crime-lords alike. The urban nightscape becomes a hunting ground as battles rage in the shadows of bizarre buildings. And a reckoning is due at the city's heart, in the vast edifice of Perdido Street Station. It is too late to escape. Praise for China Miéville: 'You can't talk about Miéville without using the word "brilliant"' - Ursula K. Le Guin 'One of the most interesting and freakishly gifted writers of his generation' - The Daily Telegraph 'As intelligent as he is original' - The Guardian 'The names of Kafka and Orwell tend to be invoked too easily for anything a bit out of the ordinary, but in this case they are worthy comparisons' - The Times Perdido Street Station is the first of China Miéville's novels set in Bas-Lag. For more, read The Scar and Iron Council.