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Title details for This Census-Taker by China Miéville - Available

This Census-Taker

by China Miéville
Matthew Frow
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
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 Miéville.
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 Miéville 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

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    January 12, 2016

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780399567261
      • File size: 116452 KB
      • Duration: 04:02:36

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Matthew Frow lends his youthful voice to this unsettling and atmospheric story of a runaway child who believes one parent has killed the other. It's a difficult plot to follow, with the story abruptly shifting between first and third person throughout. While Frow's sensitive narration helps the listener navigate this unusual narrative device more deftly, the voices he employs for secondary characters are less helpful, often proving indistinguishable from one another in spite of Miéville's range of colourful supporting characters. Frow's reading nevertheless captures the the darker side of childhood in this novella. Z.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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