Perdido Street Station
core novel 2000 Bas-Lag / New Crobuzon
Record
| First published | 2000 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.98 (77,568 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 640 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780333781722 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Perdido Street Station is the first novel in the Bas-Lag series, set in the sprawling industrial city-state of New Crobuzon, home to humans alongside many other intelligent species, including the beetle-headed khepri and the bird-like garuda. The scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is approached by Yagharek, a garuda who has had his wings forcibly removed as punishment for an unspecified crime, and who asks Isaac to help him regain the ability to fly. While researching flight using a variety of specimens, Isaac unknowingly acquires a caterpillar that feeds on a powerful hallucinogenic drug and undergoes a metamorphosis into a slakemoth, a monstrous creature able to paralyze victims by the hypnotic patterns on its wings. When the escaped slakemoth attacks a colleague and frees several more of its kind held captive by a crime boss, the city faces a spreading, difficult-to-contain menace.
Where it sits
- Universe: Bas-Lag / New Crobuzon
- Series: Bas-Lag core; position 1 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: China Miéville
Awards (verified)
- Arthur C. Clarke Award (Best Novel), 2001: won
Notes
- From the series record (Bas-Lag): Core Canon = all 3 novels (Macmillan/Del Rey, 2000-2004). Each is an independent standalone story set in the same world of Bas-Lag (no shared protagonist, no direct continuation) rather than a conventional trilogy -- registered as one continuous sequence by shared setting, this canon's existing pattern for same-world independent-story sequences. No further Bas-Lag novel has been announced as of 2026-08-11; Mieville's short fiction set in Bas-Lag (the collection Looking for Jake contains at least one Bas-Lag story) was not researched and is not registered.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Bas-Lag: position 1 of 3: next The Scar (2002)
Sources
← Bas-Lag / New Crobuzon dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.