A thriller of the war that by no means was – of survival in an difficult town – of surreal cataclysm. WITHIN THE LAST Days of New Paris, China Miéville entwines accurate historical events and people with his daring, exclusively imaginative make of fiction, reconfiguring background and art into something brand-new.

1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille, American engineer and occult disciple Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the unusual games of about The Last Days of New Paris dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde performers, Parsons finds and channels wish. But what he unwittingly unleashes may be the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the globe for ever.

1950. A lone Surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Level of resistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living pictures and texts – and by the makes of Hell. To escape the city, Thibaut must get together with Sam, an American photographer objective on documenting the ruins, and make common cause with a robust, enigmatic body of possibility and rebellion: the beautiful corpse.

But Sam has been hunted. And brand-new secrets will emerge that may test all their loyalties – to each other, to Paris outdated and new, and to reality itself.