Keanu Reeves stopped by the Late Show to discuss his new novel with Stephen Colbert.
The actor’s The Book of Elsewhere, co-written with science fiction author China Miéville (Perdido Street Station, The City & the City), was published Tuesday by Del Rey. The novel follows B, an immortal warrior who enlists the help of a black-ops group to allow him to die. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a well-written if elusive treat for fans of modern mythologizing.”
Reeves paid tribute to Miéville, who was sitting in the studio audience. “Stephen, I’m going to cry, man, because we’ve been working on this for years,” Reeves said. “This was like a dream.…and it’s like a reality, man.”
Colbert asked Reeves about how he came to collaborate with Miéville.
“I did this graphic novel, and one of the ideas was, can we take this character of B, this berserker of the world, and have artists tell stories [about him],” Reeves said. “China is one of my favorite authors, and I said, ‘China Miéville.’”
Reeves said his suggestion was met with skepticism from people who didn’t think he’d be able to land the bestselling novelist, but Miéville agreed to work on the project.
“We met in Berlin in, I think it was 2021,” Reeves said. “He took the meeting, he came and was very serious. He had some questions for me about what it would be like to collaborate, and what did I want, and what could he bring, what couldn’t he do, how much he could play with the toy.…He did a draft, he showed me the draft, I gave some notes and thoughts… and here we are.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
