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Overview
«Prosa que baila y deslumbra. Gaiman describe lo indescriptible.» SUSANNA CLARKE
«Es virtualmente imposible leer más de diez palabras de Neil Gaiman y no desear que te cuente el resto de la historia.» THE OBSERVER
«Demasiado inteligente para quedar atrapado en la red de una sola interpretación.» PHILIP PULLMAN
Una historia mágica y maravillosa, repleta tanto de sueños como de pesadillas. Una de las historias más vendidas y mejor valoradas de Neil Gaiman.
En el subsuelo de Londres, como debajo de cada gran ciudad, existe un mundo desconocido e invisible, plagado de extraños seres, en el que sobrevivir depende de abrir las puertas adecuadas... Hay mundos bajo tus pies, espías bajo las escaleras y formas que esperan al otro lado de los portales, que sólo has atisbado en tus sueños.
Tras leer Neverwhere, nunca volverás a pasar por los sombríos lugares del mundo moderno con la misma confianza infantil.
Neverwhere ha sido elegida como una de las 100 mejores novelas de ciencia y ficción y fantasía de todos los tiempos.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
National Bestseller
Selected as one of NPR’s Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of All Time
The #1 New York Times bestselling author’s ultimate edition of his wildly successful first novel featuring his “preferred text”—and including his new Neverwhere tale, “How the Marquis Got His Coat Back.”
Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.
“A fantastic story that is both the stuff of dreams and nightmares” (San Diego Union-Tribune), Neil Gaiman’s first solo novel has become a touchstone of urban fantasy, and a perennial favorite of readers everywhere.
“Delightful … inventively horrific.”
—USA Today
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9788416240883 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | PRH Grupo Editorial |
| Publication date: | 01/31/2018 |
| Edition description: | Spanish-language Edition |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Sales rank: | 1,071,549 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.90(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.10(d) |
| Language: | Spanish |
About the Author
Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, Anansi Boys, The Graveyard Book, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains; the Sandman series of graphic novels; and the story collections Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and Trigger Warning. He is the winner of numerous literary honors, including the Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, and the Newbery and Carnegie Medals. Originally from England, he now lives in the United States. He is Professor in the Arts at Bard College.
Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, Anansi Boys, The Graveyard Book, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains; the Sandman series of graphic novels; and the story collections Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and Trigger Warning. He is the winner of numerous literary honors, including the Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, and the Newbery and Carnegie Medals. Originally from England, he now lives in the United States. He is Professor in the Arts at Bard College.
Hometown:
Minneapolis, MinnesotaDate of Birth:
November 10, 1960Place of Birth:
Portchester, EnglandEducation:
Attended Ardingly College Junior School, 1970-74, and Whitgift School, 1974-77Website:
http://www.neilgaiman.comRead an Excerpt
Neverwhere
A Novel
Chapter One
She had been running for days now, a harum-scarum tumbling flight through passages and tunnels. She was hungry, and exhausted, and more tired than a body could stand, and each successive door was proving harder to open. After four days of flight, she had found a hiding place, a tiny stone burrow, under the world, where she would be safe, or so she prayed, and at last she slept.
Mr. Croup had hired Ross at the last Floating Market, which had been held in Westminster Abbey. "Think of him," he told Mr. Vandemar, "as a canary."
"Sings?" asked Mr. Vandemar.
"I doubt it; I sincerely and utterly doubt it." Mr. Croup ran a hand through his lank orange hair. "No, my fine friend, I was thinking metaphoncally -- more along the lines of the birds they take down mines." Mr. Vandemar nodded, comprehension dawning slowly: yes, a canary. Mr. Ross had no other resemblance to a canary. He was huge-almost as big as Mr. Vandemar -- and extremely grubby, and quite hairless, and he said very little, although he had made a point of telling each of them that he liked to kill things, and he was good at it; and this amused Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar. But he was a canary, and he never knew it. So Mr. Ross went first, in his filthy T-shirt and his crusted blue-jeans, and Croup and Vandemar walked behind him, in their elegant black suits.
There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar's eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelery; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing at all alike.
A rustle in the tunnel darkness; Mr. Vandemar's knife was in his hand, and then it was no longer in his hand, and it was quivering gently almost thirty feet away. He walked over to his knife and picked it up by the hilt. There was a gray rat impaled on the blade, its mouth opening and closing impotently as the life fled. He crushed its skull between finger and thumb.
"Now, there's one rat that won't be telling any more tales," said Mr. Croup. He chuckled at his own joke. Mr. Vandemar did not respond. "Rat. Tales. Get it?"
Mr. Vandemar pulled the rat from the blade and began to munch on it, thoughtfully, head first. Mr. Croup slapped it out of his hands. "Stop that," he said. Mr. Vandemar put his knife away, a little sullenly. "Buck up," hissed Mr. Croup, encouragingly.
"There will always be another rat. Now: onward. Things to do. People to damage."
Three years in London had not changed Richard, although it had changed the way he perceived the city. Richard had originally imagined London as a gray city, even a black city, from pictures he had seen, and he was surprised to find it filled with color. It was a city of red brick and white stone, red buses and large black taxis, bright red mailboxes and green grassy parks and cemeteries.
It was a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each other, not uncomfortably, but without respect; a city of shops and offices and restaurants and homes, of parks and churches, of ignored monuments and remarkably unpalatial palaces; a city of hundreds of districts with strange names -- Crouch End, Chalk Farm, Earl's Court, Marble Arch -- and oddly distinct identities; a noisy, dirty, cheerful, troubled city, which fed on tourists, needed them as it despised them, in which the average speed of transportation through the city had not increased in three hundred years, following five hundred years of fitful road-widening and unskillful compromises between the needs of traffic, whether horse-drawn, or, more recently, motorized, and the needs of pedestrians; a city inhabited by and teeming with people of every color and manner and kind.
When he had first arrived, he had found London huge, odd, fundamentally incomprehensible, with only the Tube map, that elegant multicolored topographical display of underground railway lines and stations, giving it any semblance of order. Gradually he realized that the Tube map was a handy fiction that made life easier but bore no resemblance to the reality of the shape of the city above. It was like belonging to a political party, he thought once, proudly, and then, having tried to explain the resemblance between the Tube map and politics, at a party, to a cluster of bewildered strangers, he had decided in the future to leave political comment to others.
He continued, slowly, by a process of osmosis and white knowledge (which is like white noise, only more useful), to comprehend the city, a process that accelerated when he realized that the actual City of London itself was no bigger than a square mile, stretching from Aldgate in the east to Fleet Street and the law courts of the Old Bailey in the west, a tiny municipality, now home to London's financial institutions, and that that was where it had all begun.
Two thousand years before, London had been a little Celtic village on the north shore of the Thames, which the Romans had encountered, then settled in. London had grown, slowly, until, roughly a thousand years later, it met the tiny Royal City of Westminster immediately to the west, and, once London Bridge had been built, London touched the town of Southwark directly across the river, and it continued to grow, fields and woods and marshland slowly vanishing beneath the flourishing town, and it continued to expand, encountering other little villages and hamlets as it grew, like Whitechapel and Deptford to the east, Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush to the west, Camden and Islington in the north, Battersea and Lambeth across the Thames to the south, absorbing all of them, just as a pool of mercury encounters and incorporates smaller beads of mercury, leaving only their names behind.
NeverwhereA Novel. Copyright © by Neil Gaiman . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a boring career in finance and a pretty but demanding fiancée. Then one night he stumbles across a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. He stops to help her, and the life he knows vanishes in an instant.
Several hours later, the girl is gone, too. And by the following morning, Richard Mayhew has been erased from his world. His bank cards no longer work, taxi drivers won't stop for him, his fiancée doesn't recognize him, and his landlord rents his apartment out to strangers. He has become invisible and inexplicably consigned to a London of shadows and darkness -- to a city of monsters and saints, assassins and angels -- that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations. He has fallen through the cracks of reality and has landed somewhere different, somewhere that is Neverwhere.
Neverwhere is the home of the Lady Door, the mysterious girl whom Richard rescued in the London Above. A personage of great power and nobility in this murky, candlelit realm, she is on a mission to discover the persons responsible for her family's slaughter and, in doing so, preserve this strange underworld kingdom from the malevolence that means to destroy it. And, with nowhere else to turn, Richard Mayhew must now join the Lady Door's entourage in their determined and possibly fatal quest.For the dreaded journey ever-downward -- through bizarre anachronisms and dangerous incongruities, and into dusty corners of stalled time -- is Richard's final hope, his last road back to a "real world" that is growing disturbingly less real by the minute.
Discussion Questions
- Who is Richard Mayhew? What defines his everyday life in London? How would you characterize his relationship with Jessica? Who does he encounter on the street who alters the course of his life? How is this event predicted by the old fortuneteller at his going away party?
- Who are Mr. Vandemar and Mr. Croup? Describe their personalities. Did you find any of their appearances in the book terrifying or humorous? Which ones? Who are they searching for at the beginning of the book?
- Who is the Lady Door? What are some of her unusual powers? What creatures help Door gain access to the marquis de Carabas? What is her quest?
- How would you describe the marquis de Carabas? Did he seem entirely trustworthy to you? With whom does he collude? What is the significance of the silver box he gives to Old Bailey? What transformation does de Carabas undergo in Neverwhere?
- Where does Richard meet Hunter? How does she help him in the London Below? How does she react to the disappearance of Anaesthesia? Whom does she vow to protect? How is that pledge ultimately compromised? Were you surprised by her betrayal?
- How would you describe London Below? What serves as its primary mode of transportation? Who populates it? What regular occasion serves as a kind of neutral meeting ground?
- Name some of the more eccentric characters Richard Mayhew encounters in London Below. Were there any aspects of this region that you found particularly fascinating or easy to envision?
- Did you feel sympathy for any character in particular? Did you feel revulsion for any of the characters? Which ones?
- Of the special powers enjoyed by Islington, Door, de Carabas, and Hunter, which ones did you find most marvelous? Which abilities would you like to possess? How did Richard interact with this motley crew?
- Were you surprised by Richard's decision at the end of Neverwhere? Why do you think he made such a choice?
About the author
Neil Gaiman is the critically acclaimed author of the novels American Gods (winner of the 2002 Hugo Award for Best Novel), Stardust (winner of the American Library Association's Alex Award), and the award-winning Sandman series of graphic novels, as well as Smoke and Mirrors, a collection of short fiction, and Coraline (winner of the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella), a tale for readers of all ages. His first book for children, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, illustrated by Dave McKean, was one of Newsweek's Best Children's Books of 1997. In 2003, Gaiman and McKean teamed up again to produce another illustrated children's book, The Wolves in the Walls. His small press story collection, Angels & Visitations, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and won the International Horror Critics Guild Award for Best Collection. Originally from England, Gaiman now lives in America.
Interviews
On Tuesday, June 17th, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Neil Gaiman to discuss NEVERWHERE.
Montey from NYC:
Neil Gaiman: Frantic negotiations are currently going on to buy NEVERWHERE (the movie rights). To be completely honest, I have no favorite actors, the characters are so real to me, it is difficult to pinpoint an actor and actress. If anybody, I could play Richard, but I have no plans of acting.
Robert from New Jersey: Who do you think is the best horror/fantasy writer out there today?
Neil Gaiman: If it has to include both categories, the finest author out there is Jonathan Carroll, who is now being published in trade paperback, normally in the literature shelves. Books such as SLEEPING IN FLAME, A CHILD ACROSS THE SKY, and OUTSIDE THE DOG MUSEUM.
Dickey Charlton from Studio City, CA: Great book!! Marquis de Carabas rocks!! Where do you think up these unusual characters? Are they strictly from your imagination, or do you use any real people as influences for your characters? (Marquis de Carabas in particular.)
Neil Gaiman: I think de Carabas probably, in my head, originally began life as a kind of Richard O'Brien character. But most characters in NEVERWHERE came out of place names. I wondered what the Earl would be like in Earl's Court or the Angel in Islington. In the Marquis I wanted a character who was, in his mind at least, always one step ahead of the plot.
Paul from New York City: Do you prefer writing comics or writing full-length books?
Neil Gaiman: What I prefer is telling stories and every method of telling stories. Whether comics, TV, film, radio drama, short stories, poems, or novels. They all have their up sides and down sides. But for me, the primary goal is always the act of telling the story.
Greg from St. Louis, MO: Croup and Vandemar are a couple of vicious dudes. Do you think such evil exists in our world today, or only in fiction?
Neil Gaiman: I think one cannot read a book about serial killers or the Holocaust without realizing that evil exists in reality worse than anything one will encounter in fiction. Croup and Vandemar, however, are cartoon evil characters. Like most of the people in NEVERWHERE, they know their roles in the book and are proud, delighted, and possibly even honored to be the bad guys. As Mr. Croup puts it, they don't have any redeeming features.
Mike Margiotta from Albany, NY: I really enjoy your Sandman work. I also love the collaboration you did with THE BOOKS OF MAGIC. Do you have any plans to bring back Morpheus? I have been away from comic books for several years now, so excuse my question if you currently have anything like this currently in print. I love your work!
Neil Gaiman: The story of Sandman is really over -- you'll find it in the ten volumes of graphic novels that begin with PRELUDES AND NOCTURNES and ends with THE WAKE. It's one story that took eight years to tell and 2,500 pages, and for now I am very content to leave it that way.
V. from Florida: Hello, good fellow! How's it going? Any date set on the Stardust publication? How about a Miracle Man resurgence?
Neil Gaiman: Stardust, which is a four-volume adult fairy story and will be very heavily illustrated by Charles Vess, will be published in six weekly intervals starting in October. No news on Miracle Man, although the next issue has been finished for almost four years now.
Sue from Port Washington, NY: As a child, which comic strip did you most enjoy reading, and did those strips influence you today?
Neil Gaiman: The comic strip I most enjoyed and which probably influences me today was Feiffer. I practically learned to read on the Feiffer collection THE EXPLAINERS, and I think the comic book that I most enjoyed was the original Swamp Thing.
tyg from Silicon Valley: Hi, Neil. Any word on "Neverwhere" being picked up for U.S. showing? Also, did any other signings in the Boston area materialize?
Neil Gaiman: Two noes.... If people want to see "Neverwhere" the TV series, which is flawed but fun, they should write to whatever station you would like to see it on (Sci-Fi, PBS) and let them know. I am only doing the stops on the tour.
Shaun from Parma: How much difference is there between the British and U.S. versions of NEVERWHERE? Also, when will we see some of the endless miniseries?
Neil Gaiman: The American version of NEVERWHERE is about 10,000 words longer than the English; it has a few extra scenes and a lot more description. However, it lost one of the prologues (which can be found on the Avon web site), and it lost some of the jokes.
Kirk Chritton from Sedalia, Missouri: How has living in the U.S. changed your working relationship with Dave McKean?
Neil Gaiman: Well, our old working relationship consisted of one of us phoning the other every night at 2am because we were the only people we knew who would be up at that time, and we would see each other every few weeks. Now when we do things together it is in shorter, more concentrated bursts, but we still delight in working with each other, and I loved doing THE DAY I SWAPPED MY DAD FOR TWO GOLDFISH. We have a book called DUST COVERS coming out toward the end of this year.
Pauline from Berkeley, CA: I'm also a fan of Jonathan Carroll. Any chance of both of you collaborating in a venture of some sort?
Neil Gaiman: There are people you don't want to collaborate with, because you want to see what they do and because what they do is so unique. Authors like Jonathan Carroll or Iain Sinclair or Gene Wolfe are people I want to read, not to write with.
Sean Kelley McKeever from Columbus, OH: Do you plan on writing more comics in the near future, and if so, will you only write for comics occasionally, or will you possibly take on another monthly series?
Neil Gaiman: I have no plans to write another monthly ongoing series at this time. But it is possible a few years down the road. Most of the work I am currently doing in comics is very short. Sandman took me almost a decade to write, so these days I like things I can finish by teatime.
Ismael from N.Y: What is your obsession with angels? From Lucifer and the Angels that keep Hell in SEASONS OF MIST, MURDER MYSTERIES to NEVERWHERE.
Neil Gaiman: I don't know. Every time I write a good angel, I think I've got them out of my system forever, and then I'll turn around and another angel has crept in. They are like roaches. All I can do is apologize.
Eden from Virginia: In that great interview with you from the book COMIC BOOK REBELS from a few years ago, you mentioned working on a show for the BBC called something like "The Underside." I'm assuming that became NEVERWHERE. I'm just curious about how long you've had the concept of NEVERWHERE.
Neil Gaiman: Yes, since 1991.
Kjartan from Norway: Thinking back to the book GOOD OMENS, how is writing a book alone, like NEVERWHERE, compared to writing it together with another writer?
Neil Gaiman: I get to keep more of the royalties. It is difficult to explain and probably bears the same kind of relationship that masturbation does to sex.
Jeffro from Colorado: Any plans for an "Endless" characters' miniseries any time soon (besides Death)?
Neil Gaiman: There is a "Destiny" series, which I don't have anything to do with, coming soon. I plan to write a "Delirium" series once I finish writing STARDUST.
Cindy Archer from Houston, TX: Your story "Snow, Glass, Apples" was a real treat. Do you have any plans to give other "Disneyized" stories the same treatment, returning them to the grisly tales from which they most likely evolved?
Neil Gaiman: I was planning to write a "Jack in the Beanstalk" retelling at some point. We'll see. Avon plans to release a short story collection next year, tentatively entitled SMOKE AND MIRRORS.
Pauline from Berkeley, CA: Do you have any comments regarding censorship in comix? BTW, congrats for winning the award for best fantasy short story (for a graphic novel, no less!). Must have ticked off some of the fantasy writers out there!! :)
Neil Gaiman: Thanks for the congratulations. The bit I thought was silly, was we got the award on Saturday night and on Sunday morning, they changed the rules to prevent it from ever happening again. My main comment on censorship is that I am in favor neither of it nor of any self-appointed censors. Which is why I've given so much time and energy to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which fights for First Amendment rights. I just had a chapbook called ON CATS AND DOGS published by Dreamhaven Books, profits from which will go to the CBLDF.
Lizard Man from The Swamp: Mr. Gaiman, I absolutely love your work and I am psyched to read NEVERWHERE. I just want to know what graphic novels you read?
Neil Gaiman: "Cerebus," "From Hell" and "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken" (by Seth) are three of my current favorites.
V. from Florida: I read somewhere that you may be directing a "Death" film. True or untrue?
Neil Gaiman: An outline for "Death" the movie is sitting on somebody's desk at Warner Bros. But everything depends on what happens with and to the "Sandman" film (which I am not involved with).
Andy from Allentown, PA: Will you ever combine any of the characters from your Sandman series with any of your other books? I would love to see them with Door and Richard.
Neil Gaiman: I strongly suspect that the world of NEVERWHERE is the world of Sandman, but I could be wrong.
Moderator: Thanks for joining us this evening, Neil.
Neil Gaiman: Thank you for having me, and thanks to barnesandnoble.com, which has been so supportive with all my books.
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