London’s Overthrow

About the Book

London’s Overthrow is a potent polemic describing the capital in a time of austerity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Award-winning author and essayist China Miéville cuts through the hyperbole of our politicians to present a view from ordinary London – of the inequality, oppression and indignity and the hidden, subversive sentiment pervading throughout our streets.

About the Author

China Miéville is the author of various works of fiction and non-fiction. His works include London's Overthrow (The Westbourne Press), The City & The City, Embassytown and Railsea. His non-fiction includes Between Equal Rights, a study of international law and October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. He is three-times winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, two-times winner of the British Fantasy Award, and has also won the Hugo, World Fantasy and British Science Fiction awards. He lives and works in London. chinamieville.net

→ Author Website

Reviews

‘China Miéville does more than reveal the skull beneath the London’s scabby, piebald skin; he offers effervescent nourishment for the downpressed souls that stalk the streets of his divided city. Anybody who wants to know what has happened here – in the ground zero of a failed neoliberal experiment – must start with his unsettling panorama.’
Paul Gilroy

‘Miéville gives us a vision of a pre-apocalyptic London, where the chasm between rich and poor has reached catastrophic levels and anger is the only reasonable response.’
Hari Kunzru

'The book’s tone reaches neither despair nor defiance, but tension. It’s written with the rhythm of opposing armies mustering for battle—of stormclouds waiting to burst [...] for a dreamlike tour of crisis-wracked London, this little book will be hard to beat.'
David Sewell, The Socialist Worker

'I can't help feeling that this book was conceived and written in the same kind of mood, and for the same kinds of reasons, as The Waste Land – with the crucial difference that Miéville, as a socialist, has to keep believing that one day, things will get better [...] I would trust Miéville about London.'
Nick Lezard, The Guardian