294 – China Miéville & A Million Dreaming Words for Ghost

There are big books and big books. This week we cover a HUGE book.

China Miéville is the guest. The award-winning author of Perdido Street Station, Embassytown, The City & the City, and other modern speculative classics – and he’s back with a book two decades in the making.

 

The Rouse is an epic of true proportions, a 1300-page saga of the twentieth century, rife with war, atrocity, tragedy, and a secret war fought with ghosts?? That’s the premise but it barely touches the sides of this ginormous undertaking.

 

This is not just a conversation, it’s a search for answers – in which we plumb the personal, political, and supernatural influences behind this story of shady military conspiracy and ghosts of many strange kinds.

 

I hope you enjoy, ‘cos I worked my ass off for this one!

 

Other books mentioned:

• King Rat (1999), by China Miéville
• The City & The City (2009), by China Miéville
• Ducks, Newburyport (2019), by Lucy Ellman
• Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), by Thomas Pyncheon
• Against the Day (2006), by Thomas Pyncheon
• House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski
• “The Ash Tree” (1904), by M.R. James
• A Dark Corner (1971), by Celia Dale

 

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