Perdido Street Station - Opening

A window burst open high above the market. A basket flew from it and arced towards the oblivious crowd. It spasmed in mid-air, then spun and continued earthwards at a slower, uneven pace. Dancing precariously as it descended, its wire-mesh caught and skittered on the building's rough hide. It scrabbled at the wall, sending paint and concrete dust plummeting before it.

"I even gave up for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That's a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that."

Philip K. Dick, We Can Build You

to Emma

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A Del Rey Book

Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright 2000 by China Miéville

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Great Britain by Macmillan Publishers Ltd., London, in 2000.

Perdido Street Station is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the autor's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Manufactured in the United States of America