X-Book

The Last Days of New Paris

Click Buy to Log in and see personalised pricing.

Send as a gift Get in the xigxag app
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

A thriller of a war that never was - of survival in an impossible city - of surreal cataclysm. In The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville entwines true historical events and people with his daring, uniquely imaginative brand of fiction, reconfiguring history and art into something new.

1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille, American engineer and occult disciple Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world for ever.

1950. A lone Surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts - and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city, Thibaut must join forces with Sam, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins, and make common cause with a powerful, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse.

But Sam is being hunted. And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties - to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself.

Critics Review

A dazzling scholarly fantasy . . . The bestiary of surrealist manifs, or manifestations, that Miéville parades before us is dazzling . . . the effect is exhilaratingly precise and serious, as though Albert Camus had rewritten Raiders of the Lost Ark . . . At the story’s climax it turns out to be satisfyingly horrible, but not as bad as what follows – a brilliantly eerie apparition that it would be invidious to reveal here . . . This intense, scholarly fantasy speaks to our age.
Guardian
Treading the line between beauty and horror, history and fantasy, Miéville filters a clash of art and philistinism through the medium of wartime spy fiction. This dense, clever book’s flights of fancy are grounded in details such as “a miraculously uneaten cat” dashing for cover, the whole thing rounded off with a knowing satirical wink.
Financial Times
[The Last Days of New Paris] has a hallucinatory jeu d’esprit . . . Fun, very inventive and thoughtful, particularly for readers interested in Surrealism’s revolutionary politics. I loved it.
Daily Telegraph
If anyone were to write a sequel to Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino’s dreamlike catalogue of fantastic places, then China Miéville might well be the man for the job . . . Miéville has always had a knack for visions of the uncanny . . . Here he is evoking other people’s imaginings, still with precision and grace.
Times Literary Supplement
Initially joyous, fundamentally chilling book . . . Riotous . . . With its fractured oppositions, bad taste, demagoguery and monstrous alliances it seems all too relevant.
Spectator
There's so much absurd beauty among the fauna in this story of surrealist art come to life in Nazi-occupied France, in fact, that the author's subtler points about imagination and oppression arrive as a surprise . . . The finale of The Last Days of New Paris is both moving and disturbingly timely: Imagination has often been used to puncture fascism; now Miéville asks whether fascism can defeat and subvert art.
Newsday
A fine introduction to [Miéville's] unique imagination
Chicago Tribune
A strange and compelling tale.
New York Post
A novel both unhinged and utterly compelling, a kind of guerrilla warfare waged by art itself, combining both meticulous historical research and Miéville's unparalleled inventiveness.
Los Angeles Times
Hauntingly poetic, strangely beautiful . . . The characters, especially Sam the journalist, are vividly drawn into life. This is a book that deftly balances thumping action with quiet contemplation.
San Francisco Book Review
Miéville’s subtle understanding of politics, married to his sophisticated interest in science and art, gives us a short tale that is packed with ideas and inventions . . . A page-turner whose end left me almost physically applauding.
New Statesman
Fascinating . . . an unforgettable dreamscape superimposed on the familiar, a manifestation of the mind worth examining.
Barnes and Noble blog
Fantasy and historical events intermingle in a visionary tale of war and resistance taking in surrealist André Breton, the Nazi occupation and the forces of hell
Guardian
That you really want to know what side will win says much about the quality of a necessarily strange and uncompromising book that reminds us that the old weird of surrealism still has the power to shock if we remember to look at it with fresh eyes.
SFX
Miéville takes one of the most exhausted tropes of alternate history – a counterfactual Second World War – and breathes joyously vivid life into it. With relish and thoughtful deliberation, he juxtaposes the intentional irrationality of Surrealism with the uglier, bloodier irrationality of warfare . . . The Last Days Of New Paris not only delivers all the fun its premise suggests, but thrills with the sheer depth of its ambition, invention and historical detail.
Sunday Herald (Glasgow)
Beautiful, stunningly realized . . . [The Last Days of New Paris] is a brief vacation in alien latitudes, a midnight layover in an imaginary place.
NPR
Author China Mieville
Narrator Ralph Lister
Duration 5 hours and 38 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781509838219
Format Audiobook
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Genre Alternative history fiction, Historical fantasy, Modern and contemporary fiction, Urban fantasy
Availability AU, GB, IE

More from the same

Author

Narrator

About xigxag

xigxag is an independent, UK-based audiobook platform and the UK’s only B Corp certified audiobook company. We offer nearly 150,000 audiobooks, all with professional human narration. No AI-generated voices. xigxag is rated an Ethical Consumer Best Buy for audiobooks and a top-rated ethical bookshop.

There is no subscription. You buy the audiobooks you want, you own them permanently, and prices start at £8.99. The more you listen over the year, the less you pay per book, and there is always a selection in Listen for Less from £3.99. You can also send audiobooks as gifts using our audiobook gift cards or in-app gifting.

Every audiobook on xigxag has honest reviews covering both the book and the narration, and our community features make it easy to share what you are listening to, discover what others recommend, and find your next listen.

Download or stream on iOS, Android, or in your browser. Browse the full catalogue at xigxag.co.uk.