This Census-Taker
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
For readers of George Saunders, Kelly Link, David Mitchell, and Karen Russell, This Census-Taker is a stunning, uncanny, and profoundly moving novella from multiple-award-winning and bestselling author China Miéville.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR
In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a profoundly traumatic event. He tries—and fails—to flee. Left alone with his increasingly deranged parent, he dreams of safety, of joining the other children in the town below, of escape.
When at last a stranger knocks at his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation might be over.
But by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? What is the purpose behind his questions? Is he friend? Enemy? Or something else altogether?
Filled with beauty, terror, and strangeness, This Census-Taker is a poignant and riveting exploration of memory and identity.
Praise for This Census-Taker
“China Miéville is a magician . . . who can both blow your mind with ideas as big as the universe and break your heart with language so precise and polished, it’s like he’s writing with diamonds.”—NPR
“The book haunts the reader; what actually happened seems always just out of reach, glimpsed in shadow as it rounds a corner ahead of our vision.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“[Mieville’s] been compared to Karen Russell and George Saunders, and rightfully so.”—The Huffington Post
“Marvellous.”—The Guardian
“Lingers in the mind like an unsettling dream.”—Financial Times
“A thought-provoking fairy tale for adults . . . [This Census-Taker] resembles the narrative style, quirkiness, and plotting found in the works of Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, or Steven Millhauser.”—Booklist
“Brief and dreamlike . . . a deceptively simple story whose plot could be taken as a symbolic representation of an aspect of humanity as big as an entire society and as small as a single soul.”—Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Weird exemplar Mi ville (Three Moments of an Explosion) evokes fantasy from the emotional currents of daily life, eradicating differences between self and other and between reality and dream. An anonymous narrator, who's currently a prisoner but spoken of as an "honored guest," relates a tragic childhood in a nameless, war-ravaged society. His isolated life is shattered when his father, a so-called keymaker whose keys open clients' hidden desires, murders his mother. His claims that his father buried his mother in a pit don't prevent the adult authorities from returning him to his father's care. The only glimmer of joy in his life is his chance friendship with two orphans, motherly Samma and tough Drobe. The narrative of guilt and justice is accelerated by the appearance of the Census-Taker, an official who "counts people and things" and whose relentless probing leads the narrator to become the stranger's assistant, searching for his own personality by recording the lives of others. Mi ville's Kafkaesque narrator is a man without identity who delves for meaning in other people's stories, statistics, and untrustworthy memories. Fans of Mi ville's work will recognize and relish his sharp, probing storytelling. Sparse language and a minimalist approach make this intellectual vivisection best suited to readers who are willing to work for meaning.
