London’s Overthrow by China Miéville (review)

This is a pretty good tiny book. The author walks around London pondering social decline and the possibility of chaos. Accompanying amateur-smartphone photos are evocative. You get a taste of London culture, local history and the bleak vibes post-2008. The standard left-wing issues/critique/efforts xylophone is played eloquently. The book came out in 2011 in the aftermath of a decent amount of upheaval (the 2010 student protests and 2011 youth riots) and it occurred to me that the right-wing has dominated UK national politics ever since. How significant was this restive period beyond the well accounted for?

Great vocabulary: scabrous, grimoire, gallimaufry, hecatomb, parlous, cloacal, lachrymosity etc.

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