Embassytown by China Mieville
Just finished reading the Embassytown by China Mieville. To say the least, I am very impressed. He is one of the wirters I am tracking, since his first books. For example, King Rat and Perdido Street Station.
He had always been a writer with a quirk for the strange, but in Enbassytown he has completely transgressed this description. This book is not only very imaginatively written, the concept behind the book is a very big one too. Apart from the grand desing of the book, I love the way he does not stoop to explanation of all the nuances of the world he describes. The reader has to understand everything for himself, to do that one has to immerse in the book (which after having read the book gains a new level of meaning). Every word on the pages of the book, and even the things which are not spelled out add to the absolutely believable world of Embassytown.
There is a review by Ursula Le Guin, who, does not need any introductions..I will quote it very sparingly.
The story, at first a bit hard to follow, very soon attains faultless impetus and pacing. If Miéville has been known to set up a novel on a marvellous metaphor and then not know quite where to take it, he's outgrown that, and his dependence on violence is much diminished. In Embassytown, his metaphor - which is in a sense metaphor itself - works on every level, providing compulsive narrative, splendid intellectual rigour and risk, moral sophistication, fine verbal fireworks and sideshows, and even the old-fashioned satisfaction of watching a protagonist become more of a person than she gave promise of being. And all along we thought she was only a simile . . .
The book is a feast of imagination, delicious neologisms and I highly recomend it. Other books by China Mieville, to start with Perdido Street Station are also recommended.
Some quotes from the book.
It felt like being a child again, though it was not. Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.
***
Sometimes translation stops you understanding
***
"Language is the continuation of coercion by other means."
"Bullshit. It's cooperation"