-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Stories
by China Miéville
The fiction of multiple award–winning author China Miéville 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.
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 but violent 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?
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.
"Starred Review. His characters, whether ordinary witnesses to extraordinary events or lunatics operating out of inexplicable compulsions, are invariably well drawn and compelling. Above all, what the stories have in common is a sense that the world is not just strange, but stranger than we can ever really comprehend." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Bradbury meets Borges, with Lovecraft gibbering tumultuously just out of hearing." - Kirkus
"Though these stories can be enjoyed by any reader with a taste for thought experiments (including fans of Jonathan Lethem and George Saunders), Miéville would have been better served by a more ruthlessly edited selection." - Publishers Weekly
"Miéville once again shows his mastery of the astounding, and his many fans will not be disappointed." - Library Journal
This information about Three Moments of an Explosion was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
China Miéville is the author of numerous books, including The City & The City, Embassytown, Railsea, and Perdido Street Station. His works have won the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award (three times). He lives and works in London.
If you liked Three Moments of an Explosion, try these:
by Elaine Hsieh. Chou
Published 2026
From the critically-acclaimed author of Disorientation, a multi-genre story collection that explores the limits and possibilities of storytelling.
by Jon Mooallem
Published 2022
From the discovery of the author's face in a century-old photograph to a triple-amputee hospice director working at the border of life and death, here are thirteen hopeful, heartbreaking, and profound essays from "one of the most intelligent, compassionate, and curious authors working today" (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
by Kim Fu
Published 2022
A dazzling and daring debut story collection by PEN/Hemingway finalist, Kim Fu.
L.A. Women by Ella Berman
Two ambitious writers in 1960s LA face betrayal when one writes a novel based on the other's life.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
