British author China Mieville will be in Santa Fe on January 18 to talk about and sign copies of The Last Days of New Paris and The Census-Taker.  He will be in conversation with non-fiction writer Jord/ana Rosenberg as a benefit for the Lannan Foundation.

About Last Days:  “A thriller of 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 the 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 forever. 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, he 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.”

China Miéville’s fiction has been compared to the work of Franz Kafka, Ursula Le Guin, and Philip K. Dick. His books include The City & The City, Perdido Street Station, and Iron Council. He has won the World Fantasy Award and twice won the British Fantasy Award.  Jord/ana Rosenberg’s fields of research include eighteenth-century transatlantic literature and poetry, moral philosophy, and queer theory. Rosenberg’s book Critical Enthusiasm: Capital Accumulation and the Transformation of Religious Passion was published in 2011.

The event starts at 7:00 pm Wednesday, January 18.  Admission is $2.00-5.00 for reserved seating.