Mapping Monstrosity: Metaphorical Geographies in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy

Abstract

Beginning with a précis of China Miéville’s oeuvre and progressive political activism, this chapter interrogates the radical geographies of his Bas-Lag, a fictional world depicted in Perdido Street Station (2000), The Scar (2002), and Iron Council (2004). Saunders offers a geocriticism of Bas-Lag’s literary cartographies to analyze it as an expansive yet meticulously detailed imaginary that critiques high imperialism, industrialization, capitalism, and racism. The chapter concludes that Miéville’s deft use of geohistorical allegory makes his Bas-Lag trilogy something much more than an intoxicating series of steampunk novels; instead, it is best understood as a reflexive political treatise in a new language, that of popular geopolitics.