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This Census-Taker
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This Census-Taker
This Census-Taker is a 2016 novella by British author China Miéville. It tells the story of a boy who witnesses a violent event, which he recalls initially as his mother killing his father, but later as his father killing his mother. Centred on the mysterious events surrounding the alleged murder, it is told alternately in the first and third-person by an unreliable narrator. The writing style is sparse, Kafkaesque and a departure from the detailed world-building of Miéville's prior work.
The book explores the uncertainty and trauma experienced by the boy and features secret messages and keys as motifs. Reviewers found the story creative and praised its eerie atmosphere, but were divided about the plot due to its open-endedness. NPR described the novella as "a beautiful chocolate that you bite into and find filled with blood", and The Scotsman found its unresolved nature tantalising, while The New York Times termed it "an exercise in haunting, lovely frustration".
This Census-Taker is China Miéville's eleventh book, following after nine novels and a novella. He has said he wishes to write in every genre, and his work has been labelled variously as fantasy, science fiction, horror and weird fiction. In a 2017 interview, Miéville felt he was entering a "middle period" in his writing and spoke of a new interest in novellas, which he found well-suited to explore trauma and "the unrepresentable". He expressed his enjoyment of fiction that is difficult to interpret, such as Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and of "uneasy endings" that disorient readers. While noting a mixed response to This Census-Taker from some fans of his earlier work, Miéville described it as "the best thing I've done". He remarked that he liked the novella because he did not understand it himself; through it, he wished to communicate a feeling of estrangement and Sehnsucht.
The setting of the novella is an indeterminate town seemingly unrelated to any of Miéville's prior work. Three of his novels, King Rat, Kraken and Un Lun Dun, are set in a fictional version of London; The City and the City in a fictional Eastern Europe; Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council in a secondary world known as Bas-Lag; and Embassytown on a planet at the outskirts of the known universe. Some reviewers theorise that the town is part of Bas-Lag, a world with plant-like and aquatic inhabitants that the magazine Strange Horizons sees in the background of the novella.
A boy witnesses a violent confrontation in his house. He flees downhill to a town and initially reports that his mother has killed his father, before amending his story and stating that his father killed his mother. Two volunteer law officials go up the hill to investigate, leaving the boy in the care of street urchins with whom he is friends. The volunteers return after seeing no evidence of violence and report a letter purportedly from the mother saying that she was leaving. They return the boy to his father's care.
The narrative shifts to the past. The relationship between the boy's parents was tense, and he occasionally witnesses the father killing animals and throwing the corpses into a crevasse in a nearby cave. The boy suspects that his father has also killed people in the same way. His mother grows crops, takes them to the town to trade and scavenges in the deserted areas of the settlement. In conversations with the boy, she says that his father came from a city, wanting to escape from it. His father makes keys for the townspeople who come to visit him, which have magical properties attributed to them.
The present-day boy fears his father, still believing that he has killed his mother and that he has hidden the body in the hole within the cave. He attempts to run away, crossing the bridge to the other half of the town with the street children. They are followed and after being beaten by an official, the boy is collected by the father. One day, a man with a gun identifying as a census-taker appears while the boy's father is away. He claims to be from the father's city and is responsible for locating and accounting for its inhabitants. He descends into the hole after hearing of the boy's belief as to his mother's fate, although what he finds is not revealed. He tells the boy to hide himself while he awaits his father's return. After some time, the census-taker reappears and drops something into the hole that the boy does not see. He offers the boy the chance to leave with him and become his associate, which the boy accepts.
Sections set in the future imply that the boy has been imprisoned and is recording the information that he has collected in three books. He had a predecessor who also worked with the census-taker, whose fate is unclear and may have been present in the town during the events of the past. A coded message within the book he is writing states that the census-taker was rogue.
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This Census-Taker
This Census-Taker is a 2016 novella by British author China Miéville. It tells the story of a boy who witnesses a violent event, which he recalls initially as his mother killing his father, but later as his father killing his mother. Centred on the mysterious events surrounding the alleged murder, it is told alternately in the first and third-person by an unreliable narrator. The writing style is sparse, Kafkaesque and a departure from the detailed world-building of Miéville's prior work.
The book explores the uncertainty and trauma experienced by the boy and features secret messages and keys as motifs. Reviewers found the story creative and praised its eerie atmosphere, but were divided about the plot due to its open-endedness. NPR described the novella as "a beautiful chocolate that you bite into and find filled with blood", and The Scotsman found its unresolved nature tantalising, while The New York Times termed it "an exercise in haunting, lovely frustration".
This Census-Taker is China Miéville's eleventh book, following after nine novels and a novella. He has said he wishes to write in every genre, and his work has been labelled variously as fantasy, science fiction, horror and weird fiction. In a 2017 interview, Miéville felt he was entering a "middle period" in his writing and spoke of a new interest in novellas, which he found well-suited to explore trauma and "the unrepresentable". He expressed his enjoyment of fiction that is difficult to interpret, such as Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and of "uneasy endings" that disorient readers. While noting a mixed response to This Census-Taker from some fans of his earlier work, Miéville described it as "the best thing I've done". He remarked that he liked the novella because he did not understand it himself; through it, he wished to communicate a feeling of estrangement and Sehnsucht.
The setting of the novella is an indeterminate town seemingly unrelated to any of Miéville's prior work. Three of his novels, King Rat, Kraken and Un Lun Dun, are set in a fictional version of London; The City and the City in a fictional Eastern Europe; Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council in a secondary world known as Bas-Lag; and Embassytown on a planet at the outskirts of the known universe. Some reviewers theorise that the town is part of Bas-Lag, a world with plant-like and aquatic inhabitants that the magazine Strange Horizons sees in the background of the novella.
A boy witnesses a violent confrontation in his house. He flees downhill to a town and initially reports that his mother has killed his father, before amending his story and stating that his father killed his mother. Two volunteer law officials go up the hill to investigate, leaving the boy in the care of street urchins with whom he is friends. The volunteers return after seeing no evidence of violence and report a letter purportedly from the mother saying that she was leaving. They return the boy to his father's care.
The narrative shifts to the past. The relationship between the boy's parents was tense, and he occasionally witnesses the father killing animals and throwing the corpses into a crevasse in a nearby cave. The boy suspects that his father has also killed people in the same way. His mother grows crops, takes them to the town to trade and scavenges in the deserted areas of the settlement. In conversations with the boy, she says that his father came from a city, wanting to escape from it. His father makes keys for the townspeople who come to visit him, which have magical properties attributed to them.
The present-day boy fears his father, still believing that he has killed his mother and that he has hidden the body in the hole within the cave. He attempts to run away, crossing the bridge to the other half of the town with the street children. They are followed and after being beaten by an official, the boy is collected by the father. One day, a man with a gun identifying as a census-taker appears while the boy's father is away. He claims to be from the father's city and is responsible for locating and accounting for its inhabitants. He descends into the hole after hearing of the boy's belief as to his mother's fate, although what he finds is not revealed. He tells the boy to hide himself while he awaits his father's return. After some time, the census-taker reappears and drops something into the hole that the boy does not see. He offers the boy the chance to leave with him and become his associate, which the boy accepts.
Sections set in the future imply that the boy has been imprisoned and is recording the information that he has collected in three books. He had a predecessor who also worked with the census-taker, whose fate is unclear and may have been present in the town during the events of the past. A coded message within the book he is writing states that the census-taker was rogue.