A Weird August: The Cities of China Miéville

Meet "weird fiction"

The word “weird” has now cemented itself in the 2020s American lexicon —this is all thanks to the new Vice President candidate, Tim Walz who called the Republican party “just weird” during a TV interview last month. That blew up on social media, and then Harris tapped him for VP, and now, he’s a national hero in our hearts.

While Tim Walz and the American presidential election has nothing to do with it, I figured this was a peculiar but fun way to introduce our August book—nearly two weeks late, yes, sorry —because we will be reading a book that lives within the New Weird genre. I’ve never heard of this before but our author this month, China Miéville, interlaces this with the classic police procedural in his 2009 book, The City & the City. The New Weird movement emerged in the 1990 and 2000s and stems from the weird fiction and speculative fiction subgenres. Weird fiction “eschews or radically reinterprets traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction — such as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves.” H.P. Lovecraft is probably the most recognizable name to come out of this movement. China even goes as far as to paraphrase German polymath and writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to say that the “weird fiction evokes a sense of the numinous—” that is, arousing spiritual or religious emotions or qualities, the supernatural, and therefore, a sense of the sublime. Whether we meet monsters or other supernatural entities in The City & the City remains to be seen, but having this background to China’s literary roots will help guide us through his work. But first—more on the man himself.

China Miéville was born in Norwich, England in 1972 to parents who separated shortly after his birth. His mother has an aristocratic lineage and later remarried a baron (whose barony was created by Henry VII) but that’s neither here nor there. China, his sister, and mother moved to London, where his mother worked as a teacher and translator. Through a scholarship, he attended a boarding school in Oakham, England and took a gap year at age 18 to teach in Egypt and Zimbabwe. At Cambridge University, he pursued English but quickly switched to anthropology because he found the teaching in the English department “fairly hermetic and abstracted.” It was during this period that Miéville flourished and came into his own. Intellectually and politically, Miéville found his home in leftwing politics and Marxist philosophy and graduated from the London School of Economics with a masters and PhD in international law. He also held fellowships at Harvard University and the Royal Society of Literature. He calls London home and recently married artist and writer Season Butler.

His works are often described as fantastical due to his supernatural world-building and scenarios. His second novel, Perdido Street Station, launched his career but as a contrarian, I relish in choosing the “other” book. Plus my husband read this years ago and it comes highly recommend. Combining surrealism with detective noir, The City & the City follows a murder investigation in two cities, both existing side by side, where citizens of each city are forbidden to travel into or acknowledge the other. Perhaps this is an apt work to read in light of the continuing conflict between Israel and Palestine—food for thought. A Literary Hub critic calls this a “whodunit and whereisit” so consider this your cerebral and philosophically inclined Agatha Christie to wrap up the summer. A TV series premiered in 2018 but it doesn’t seem to have incredible reviews so I shall be sticking to the book for now.

Another fun tidbit: an unlikely partnership emerged between China and beloved actor, Keanu Reeves when they came to write a novel based on Reeves’s comic book, BRZRKR. The novel, The Book of Elsewhere, was published last month and I’m very curious on how that collaboration turned out.

This is a short one. Unlike the mammoth The Grapes of Wrath, this is a short analysis on author and book. I’m looking forward to finally dipping my toes and discussing with you. I also hope to get out September’s book club and the rest of the year’s book picks by September 1st and not halfway through the month ;) Thanks for your patience y’all!

As always, shop locally or visit your public library!

Happy reading and enjoy the rest of your summer!☀️📚 #bookclubisNOTdead