China Mieville Biography
China Miéville lives and works in London. He is a three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award (Perdido Street Station, Iron Council, and The City & the City) and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice (Perdido Street Station and The Scar). The City & The City, an existential thriller, was published in 2009 to dazzling critical acclaim and drew comparison with the works of Kafka and Orwell (The Times) and Phillip K. Dick (<>The Guardian). The City & The City recently won the British Science Fiction Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and tied with Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl for the 2010 Hugo Award. It was also shortlisted for the Nebula.
Miéville explained his unusual first name in a 2003 interview:
"My parents were hippies, and the story is that they went through a dictionary looking for a beautiful word to name me. They nearly called me Banyan, but flipped a few pages on and reached 'China,' thankfully. The other reason they liked it is that 'china' is Cockney rhyming slang for 'mate.' People say 'my old china,' meaning 'my old mate,' because 'china plate' rhymes with 'mate.'
This biography was last updated on 07/12/2011.
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