This Census-Taker
Book Details
Author(s)China Miéville
PublisherDel Rey
ISBN / ASIN1101967323
ISBN-139781101967324
AvailabilityUsually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank208,175
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
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 Mi ville.
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 Mi ville 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
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 Mi ville 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
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