This Census-Taker

This Census-Taker

<b>For readers of George Saunders, Kelly Link, David Mitchell, and Karen Russell, <i>This Census-Taker</i> is a stunning, uncanny, and profoundly moving novella from multiple-award-winning and bestselling author China Miéville.</b><br><br><b>NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR</b><br><br> 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.<br><br> When at last a stranger knocks at his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation might be over.<br><br> 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?<br><br> Filled with beauty, terror, and strangeness, <i>This Census-Taker</i> is a poignant and riveting exploration of memory and identity.<br><br><b>Praise for <i>This Census-Taker</i></b><br><br>“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.”<b>—NPR</b><br><br> “The book haunts the reader; <i>what actually happened</i> seems always just out of reach, glimpsed in shadow as it rounds a corner ahead of our vision.”<b><i>—Los Angeles Review of Books</i></b><br><br> “[Mieville’s] been compared to Karen Russell and George Saunders, and rightfully so.”<b><i>—The Huffington Post</i></b><br><br> “Marvellous.”<b><i>—The Guardian</i></b><br><br> “Lingers in the mind like an unsettling dream.”<b>—<i>Financial Times</i></b><br><br> “A thought-provoking fairy tale for adults . . . [<i>This Census-Taker</i>] resembles the narrative style, quirkiness, and plotting found in the works of Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, or Steven Millhauser.”<b>—<i>Booklist</i></b><br><br> “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.”<b>—<i>Kirkus Reviews</i></b>