New Crobuzon

New Crobuzon is a fictional city-state created by China Miéville and located in his fictional world of Bas-Lag. It is prominently featured in both Perdido Street Station and Iron Council, and serves as a plot device and background for The Scar.

Miéville has discussed the inspiration behind New Crobuzon:

I still find myself riffing off books from my past constantly, sometimes without remembering what I’m basing my writing on. New Crobuzon is highly influenced by Brian Aldiss's The Malacia Tapestry [1976] and Tim Powers's The Anubis Gates [1983], but they’d permeated me so deeply I was initially less conscious of them than of other influences.

Several commentators have noted that New Crobuzon is reminiscent of Victorian London, but sometimes note other possible influences such as modern Cairo and the Vieux Carre of New Orleans.

New Crobuzon claims dominion over a watershed along the eastern seaboard of the Rohagi continent, on the world of Bas-Lag. The city itself is situated around the Rivers Tar and Canker, whose confluence forms the wider and more navigable Gross Tar. It is the Gross Tar that connects New Crobuzon to the Iron Bay, ten miles east of the city. The mountains that separate New Crobuzon from the rest of Rohagi are called the Dancing Shoe Mountains.

The basin occupied by New Crobuzon is vast, and its terrain varies greatly. Northwest of the city is described in The Scar as an uninhabited "expanse of scrub and marsh", ending eventually at the feet of the Bezhek Mountains. Immediately to the south lies a substantial forest called the Rudewood, beyond which is found an area called the Wetlands. Eventually, the Wetlands give way to the Mendican Hills. Beyond this is the Grain Spiral: an agricultural region that supplies New Crobuzon with much of its food.

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