It ’s been right smart , right smart too long since the last China Miéville novel , 2012 ’s Railsea . Now at last , the master of unusual , thought - provoking worlds has a book add up out too soon next class , This Census - Taker . And we ’ve acquire an exclusive first look at the natural covering as well as an excerpt !
What is This Census - Taker about ? The official synopsis gives only a little clew :
In a remote house on a brow , a alone boy witnesses a deeply traumatic event . He tries – and flunk – to flee . Left alone with his progressively deranged parent , he dreams of safe , of joining the other children in the town below , of escape .
When at last a stranger knocks at his doorway , the boy senses that his days of closing off might be over .
But by what government agency does this man keep the punctilious record he carries ? What is the aim behind his questions ? Is he friend ? Enemy ? Or something else altogether ?
fulfill with smasher , terror , and strangeness , This Census - Taker is a poignant and riveting exploration of store and personal identity .
Here ’s the full natural covering of This Census - Taker , whichcomes out in January in the U.S. and Canada , andin February in the U.K. :
And here is an single excerpt from the novel , that gives a horse sense of just how formidable it ’ll be :
A male child ladder down a hill path screaming . The son was I. He held his hands up and out in front of him as if he ’d sink them in key and was coming to make a picture , to press them down to paper , but all there was on him was dirt . There was no blood on his palms .
He was nine years old , I think , and this was the fastest he ’d ever run , and he stumbled and career and it seemed many clip as if he would come down into the rocks and gorse that surrounded the footpath , but I kept my metrical unit and descended into the shadow of my pitcher’s mound . The air felt wet but no rain had fallen . I sent up cold detritus behind me and little animals scuttling ahead .
People in the town see that cloud long before I arrived , Samma would later tell me . When she could recite that it was n’t just weather , she was one of those who came to wait by the pump beyond the bridge to the west , where there were the last buildings , to see whatever was coming . After that day , when I saw her , when she could , Samma would tell me stories , including the tale of when I get down the hill .
‘ I knew it was you , ’ she ’d say . ‘ That dirt deuce on its way down . “ It ’s the boy , ” I said . A sight of us did . You must ’ve run a mile while I watched you , you ran and melt down and you did n’t slow once . You came right past the nails . ’ The nails : my name that she had adopted for a copse of dead white bushes . ‘ correctly by every rent in the pitcher’s mound and you must have heard all the devils down there howling at you . ’ When she talked like this I ’d gaze at her urgently , without speaking . ‘ We hear you coming , making noise like a hurt gull or something , and I said : “ It is , it ’s the son ! ” ‘
In I ’d come . I turned with the path , away from where the incline raise desiccant and stonier and be given precipitously , and I ran for where the crowd was hold off . I could see down distance between those outmost walls to the townsfolk ’s build up - up bridge . I was weeping so intemperately I throw up , come tawdry and filthy past the telegram - spinning mill and the glasswork , past barn and stores and the ground before them strew with previous stalk and the shards of thing that had been break within , toward the sett and concrete in view of that bridgework itself , where the townspeople waited .
There were children among them : those with adults were keep back back by them . I made noises as if I were a whooping babe . I struggled for air .
I was the only one incite while all there stare at my small figure raise dirt , until someone , I do n’t cognise who , started forward to receive me , and they land others after them in pity , Samma among them .
They ran to me with their own arms out like mine , to take me .
‘ attend ! ’ I heard a man say . ‘ God , attend at him ! ’
I keep up the hands I cerebrate were blooming for them to see .
I shouted , ‘ My female parent killed my founding father ! ’
From the forthcoming book THIS CENSUS - TAKER by China Miéville . Copyright © 2015 by China Miéville . reprint by arrangement with Del Rey , an imprint of Random House , a division of Penguin Random House LLC . All rightfield reserved .
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