Embassytown - Softcover

China Mieville

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0230754317 ISBN 13: 9780230754317

Publisher: Pan MacMillan, 2011

Synopsis

This is a limited signed edition of the enthralling new novel from the award-winning author of "Kraken and The City & The City". Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe. Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet. Here on Arieka, humans are not the only intelligent life, and Avice has a rare bond with the natives, the enigmatic Hosts - who cannot lie. Only a tiny cadre of unique human Ambassadors can speak Language, and connect the two communities. But an unimaginable new arrival has come to Embassytown. And when this Ambassador speaks, everything changes. Catastrophe looms. Avice knows the only hope is for her to speak directly to the alien Hosts. And that is impossible.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Welcome to Arieka, the distant, densely imagined planet that serves as principal setting for China Mieville's extraordinary new novel, Embassytown.Immerser Avice Benner Cho has returned to her childhood home, from her adventures in the Out. Her world is as mysterious, complex, and exotic as any you will ever encounter. It is a world in which humans and “exots” co-exist with the indigenous, enigmatic Ariekei—otherwise known as Hosts. That relationship, which is mediated by a group of unique linguists, the Ambassadors, has proceeded in relative tranquility for many years. Then one day a new, utterly unexpected Ambassador arrives... Embassytown is a novel about diplomacy and conflict in a vividly created alien society. It is also, most centrally, a meditation on the power and infinitely varied possibilities of language itself. The result is an intellectual adventure of the highest order, a distinguished addition to an imposing—and constantly surprising—body of work.

About the Author:

China Mieville lives and works in London. He is three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award (Perdido Street Station, Iron Council and The City & The City) and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice (Perdido Street Station and The Scar). The City & The City, an existential thriller, was published in 2009 to dazzling critical acclaim and drew comparison with the works of Kafka and Orwell (The Times) and Philip K. Dick (Guardian). His most recent novel, Kraken, was published in 2010.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan MacMillan
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0230754317
• ISBN 13: 9780230754317
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432