ANNOTATIONS FOR KING RAT
SPOILER ALERT
This page contains spoilers that can ruin your reading experience. Read King Rat
first, otherwise carry on at your own risk.
ANNOTATIONS
All page numbers refer to the American trade paperback edition (Tor Books, 2000.)
- China Miéville says: "Well, originally I was going to write a werewolf novel
set in London. But then the London bit started getting more and more sort of
intense, and the werewolf bit stopped working. So I went back to other
possibilities. And when I was about 18, I drew a comic about this character
King Rat. So I just pilfered him and made him the focus instead."
- [pp.40,41] The wall climbing and rooftop getaway sequences during Saul's
prison break are reminiscent of Steerpike's escape in Mervyn Peake's Titus
Groan. It is safe to assume this is where Miéville got his inspiration from,
being a big fan of Mervyn Peake and all.
- [p.71] "It was a great upturned plug straining to suck voltage out of the
clouds, a monument to energy." This is the accidentally stolen metaphor that
Miéville mentions in the acknowledgements, from Iain Sinclair's book
Downriver. Iain Sinclair was kind enough to let him keep it.
- [p.81] "Purity is a negative state and contrary to nature, Saul had once
read." Saul is remembering a passage from William Faulkner's The Sound and
the Fury.
- [p.99] "A huge squat building stood before them, a financial Gormenghast
[...]" This is another reference to Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels (see
annotation for pp.40,41.)
- [p.125] "'Me name Anansi, pickney.'" Anansi, also called 'The
Spider', is one of the most popular characters in West African mythology. Although
he is the Lord of Spiders in King Rat, Anansi was originally the son of
the sky god Nyame, and on his father's bidding brought rain to douse forest fires
and mark the borders of oceans and rivers during floods. Much like the creatures
in Perdido Street Station, Anansi too was stripped of all his cultural
significance.
- [p.125] "'Loplop presents Loplop,' he said." Loplop is a direct
reference to the bird creature in Max Ernst. See annotation for Perdido Street Station, p. 396.
- [p.154] "A DJ she knew called Three Fingers phoned her [...]" Three Fingers
is a homage to Two Fingers (co-author, with James T Kirk, of the novel
Junglist), whom China Miéville acknowledges at the start of the book.
- [p.299] "DJ! Where's the bass? / Bass! How low can you go? / R-r-r-roll the
bass . . . / Da bass too dark . . ." The slogans in Wind City are actual
quotes from real hardcore tracks.
CONTRIBUTORS
Acknowledgements go to China Miéville and Luís Rodrigues.
If you have any notes that you might like to add to this list, kindly
e-mail them to the editor.
Many thanks.
VERSION INFORMATION
This page was last modified on
Tuesday, 24-Nov-2009 13:55:55 EST.
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