The Last Days of New Paris

by China Miéville

The main plot follows Thibaut, a Parisian, in an alternate-history 1950 where World War II is still ongoing and Paris is still occupied by Nazis. He joins forces with Sam, a photographer, to fight the occupying Nazis in a landscape dominated by manifs, real-world manifestations of surrealist art.

Interstitial chapters follow an America engineer & occultist named Jack Parsons, who visits a group of Marseilles surrealists, including André Breton, in 1941. Parsons creates the “S-Bomb”, the device which creates the manifs when stolen & detonated in Paris.