Book cover for This Census-Taker

This Census-Taker

Synopsis

Details

25 February 2016
242 minutes
9781509828548
Imprint: Macmillan Digital Audio

Reviews

A short, dark fairytale, Kafka rewritten by David Mitchell, and may well be the best thing you'll read all year.
Miéville's solid, world-creating imagination is shown to powerful effect in this novella . . . a vague and misty (and, incidentally, superb) tale about the need to get things absolutely straight.
Harrowing beauty and existential disorientation . . . it's a Miéville book, after all. As I write this I can very clearly picture two scenes from this story about a boy who witnesses a killing in his isolated rural home. Not a word is said aloud in either scene, but the interpretative stakes in both are high enough to give you a nosebleed.
Miéville's brain-twisting, inventive use of language pins the indefinable to the page, reading this slim book feels like gasping a lungful of air, holding it throughout the letting it out slowly, wondering what just happened. A challenging, thought-provoking read.