…the other was a torso, jutted from the bicycle itself, its moving prow, a figurehead where handlebars should be. She was extruded from the metal. She pushed her arms backward and they curled at the ends like coral. She stretched her neck and widened her eyes.
Thibault swallowed and tried to speak, and tried again, and screamed, “It’s the Vélo!”
Just a novella this week, but that’s okay because there’s enough glorious weirdness in China Mieville’s latest work to fill a whole novel.
The story begins with the sound of gunfire. German soldiers scatter as they’re attacked by a creature in the shape of a woman merged with a bicycle. Even stranger, the reaction of the French Resistance fighters watching is less Dear God What Is That Thing, and more Look Out, It’s Another One.
The Last Days of New Paris is set in an alternate history version of Nazi-occupied Paris, where an unexplained event, the S-Blast, has somehow tapped into the soul of the Surrealism movement. Now images from works by Max Ernst, André Breton, Yves Tanguy, and hundreds more are stalking the streets, while demons called from Hell reluctantly follow the German soldiers’ orders, and the very landscape of Paris has been twisted into something impossible.
A blast, an acceleration, the distillate, the spirit, the history, the weaponized soul of convulsive beauty went critical.
It unfolded.
In this version of 1950’s Paris, the German war effort is still going strong. Although it’d be tough to say that the Germans are winning. After the S-Blast went off in 1941 the entire city was cordoned off to prevent the mutated images from spreading to the rest of the world. This means that all the people trapped inside – German soldiers and scientists, French resistance fighters, and everyday Parisians wondering what the hell happened – have had nine years to deal with this insanity. The fact that the main character wears pajamas that can somehow stop bullets isn’t even close to the weirdest thing going on.
China Mieville’s writing has always been stunningly visual, but he’s outdone himself with the images here. This is a Paris where night will fall over just one lamppost in the middle of the day, and buildings melt or turn sideways or drip with urine. It’s a place where feathered eyes feed on images and make somewhat decent eating (a bit greasy). It’s a city where the Eiffel Tower is still standing…but only the top half, hanging suspended over the empty space where the lower half used to be.
Apart from several scenes in 1941, we see most of this through the eyes of Thibault, a resistance fighter who for some reason is somewhat immune to the manifs (walking Surrealist images). He’s fiercely loyal to Paris, so much so that he instantly decides to help a lone photographer who’s collecting images for a book about the occupied city. But he’s also very tired after nine years in a city that’s actively trying to kill anyone still left inside.
The German soldiers will shoot to kill, obviously. The manifs are mostly hostile to the Germans, but they’ll murder anyone else if they’re in the right mood. The German scientists are trying to find ways to control the manifs, or create their own, but they’ve also managed to raise an army from Hell, and it can be damn hard to tell the difference between a Parisian manif, a Nazi-controlled one, or a demon who’s always in a bad temper from not being able to go home. Then you have at least a dozen different branches of the French resistance, not all of them friendly to each other, spies from several countries who all have their own agendas, and shifting alliances in a time when having a “treaty” basically translated to “it’s convenient for us to not be shooting at each other. Today.”
And even if you navigate past all that alive, you can still be the victim of everyday thugs who haven’t changed their habits since the war started.
This story can be read on several different levels, depending on how much information you have. You can enjoy it on a surface level, which is entertainingly bizarre. But it will add layers of depth the more you learn about what went on during the war (combining the words “WWII Germany” and “scientific experiments” will get you something disturbing every time), or the history of certain artists (there’s a reason why the Germans would have wanted to bring to life anything by Arno Breker, and why that would have been difficult). And there’s so much to learn about the entire Surrealism movement, from minor things like what exactly the phrase Exquisite Corpse means and why are there so many references to “unfolding”, to the whole point of Surrealism itself, and why it was considered “revolutionary”, and how it affects the meaning of this story as you try to interpret what it was revolting against.
One last note, and this is especially for those of you who haven’t read anything by China Mieville yet. There’s a phrase I’ve found in a few different places when I was doing a little research: “Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur.” That is a perfect description, not just of this story, but of all of my very favorite China Mieville books. Have you read Perdido Street Station yet? You really need to read that one. Go on, I’ll wait.