New York becomes a social allegory from the pen of NK Jemisin

NK Jemisin returns with a new saga, published in France by I read in February 2021. In this ambitious social fresco, the author once again awakens the buried forces of our planet, but on the scale of New York.

A few years after the brilliant trilogy of Fractured Earth and three Hugo Prizes for this work (never seen before), the American writer NK Jemisin has embarked on a new ambitious literary saga: Genesis of the City. The first volume, Megapoles, has just been published, at the beginning of February 2021, in France (translated by Michelle Charrier).

In this new work, at the confluence between SF and urban fantasy, the megalopolises are transformed into real living entities, each district of which is personified by an inhabitant. The first protagonist we meet, Manny, wakes up one day, in the subway, having forgotten most of his memories, but knowing one thing: he is Manhattan. He will cross the road to Brooklyn and other parts of the city, also personified.

All this is guided by a stake: forces of evil are awakening from the depths of the city, dark creatures with Lovecraftian paces that threaten the integrity of the city, and therefore of its population.

NK Jemisin unleashes telluric forces, even in town

Faithful to his pen, NK Jemisin makes each description, each scene, a Homeric and carnal moment. Even when his characters don’t move mountains (literally) as in Fractured Earth, his stories seem to constantly liberate the telluric forces of our planet; its buried forces in the broad sense.

NK Jemisin gives us a dense and feverish writing, almost like a shaman. She perfectly knows how to put grandiose into her work, without ever neglecting the intimate psychology of the protagonists of this odyssey.

It must be admitted, however, that NK Jemisin’s verb is slightly less intense in The Genesis of the City that in the cycle of Fractured Earth. Certain descriptions, close to sometimes somewhat artificial convolutions, make the story lose rhythm, especially in the middle of the novel. But the poetry of his pen, the interest one has in the story and the in-depth psychology of the characters, counterbalance the moments of boredom caused by these fleeting delays. Readers of Fractured Earth will be conquered.

Social fresco

The Genesis of the City is an even more biting social fresco Fractured Earth because of its present, urban context, so close to us. Relying on characters of color, or discriminated against for their gender, or from social minorities, NK Jemisin puts his pen at the heart of the socio-cultural and socio-political fractures that can structure a city the size of New York.

In this sense, the idea of ​​a Genesis of the City refers to the humanity behind the postcard image of a megalopolis. The original title of the novel in their original version is perhaps even more telling: The City We Became ; the city we have become.

The novelist makes New York a living entity, in the proper sense, but this life is born from all its inhabitants, all its inhabitants, who, by their similarities and differences, forge much more than a community: a great whole, a whole . Each neighborhood is an organ, each being is a cell. Everything that each and every one has done, felt, thought, contributes to nourish this great whole.

Even if the rhythm is less viscerally intense than in the Fractured earth, NK Jemisin confirms, with Genesis of the city, his talent for taking us to ambitious sagas, where imaginary Odyssian destinies echo our realities on a human scale.

• You can order The Genesis of the City in independent bookstore near you by the way by La Librairie

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