Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post € NPR € The Guardian € Kirkus Reviews € The fiction of multiple award€“winning author China Mi©ville is powered by intelligence and imagination. Like George Saunders, Karen Russell, and David Mitchell, he pulls from a variety of genres with equal facility, employing the fantastic not to escape from reality but instead to interrogate it in provocative, unexpected ways.
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London awakes one morning to find itself besieged by a sky full of floating icebergs. Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse€s bones€"designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?
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Of such concepts and unforgettable images are made the twenty-eight stories in this collection€"many published here for the first time. By turns speculative, satirical, and heart-wrenching, fresh in form and language, and featuring a cast of damaged yet hopeful seekers who come face-to-face with the deep weirdness of the world€"and at times the deeper weirdness of themselves€"Three Moments of an Explosion is a fitting showcase for one of literature€s most original voices.
Praise for Three Moments of an Explosion
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€œChina Mi©ville is dazzling. His latest collection of short stories, Three Moments of an Explosion, crowds virtuosity into every sentence.€Â€"The New York Times
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€œYou can€t talk about [China] Mi©ville without using the word €˜brilliant.€ . . . His wit dazzles, his humour is lively, and the pure vitality of his imagination is astonishing.€Â€"Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
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€œ[A] gripping collection . . . Mi©ville expertly mixes science fiction, fantasy and surrealism. . . . Amid the longer stories are more cerebral, poetic flash pieces that will haunt the reader beyond the pages of this exceptional book.€Â€"The Washington Post
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€œThe stories shine . . . with a winking brilliance.€Â€"The Seattle Times
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€œMind-bending excursions into the fantastic.€Â€"NPR
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€œBradbury meets Borges, with Lovecraft gibbering tumultuously just out of hearing.€Â€"Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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€œThree Moments of an Explosion is a book filled with fabulous oddities.€Â€"Entertainment Weekly
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€œMi©ville moves effortlessly among realism, fantasy, and surrealism. . . . His characters, whether ordinary witnesses to extraordinary events or lunatics operating out of inexplicable compulsions, are invariably well drawn and compelling.€Â€"Publishers Weekly (starred review)