The City and the City (2009) - China Miéville

While I confess to never having read a China Miéville novel before The City and the City, I have read a few of his short stories. From those I came away with the sense that one of Miéville’s favorite themes is the uneasy, sometimes foreboding feeling one gets after realizing that the forces in this world that can’t be seen are more unsettling than the ones we can. The City and the City is, in a very fundamental way, about this feeling, but it is so much more.

The novel begins with a detective named Borlú assigned to solve the murder of a young woman in his home city of Beszel. No problem, right? Ah, but Beszel co-exists in the same place as another city, Ul Qoma. The citizens of one city have been trained for generations to ignore or “un-see” anything that might go on in the other city. Each city has its own police force and judicial system, but anyone caught “crossing over” into a place they don’t belong or participating in an activity that would cause one to “recognize” the other city comes under the jurisdiction of the Breach, a powerful entity that seemingly sees all, knows all, and tells nothing.

If it all sounds ludicrous, trust me that Miéville is talented (okay, brilliant) enough to make it all work. Even when Borlú is granted permission to investigate the case in Ul Qoma, I thought the whole thing was going to fall apart, but Miéville clearly has it all figured out in a way that, if you think about it, makes perfect sense.

The easy danger in reading The City and the City is in trying to turn everything into a metaphor. Yes, anyone who’s lived in a city (or even visited one, for that matter) knows that certain people can be ignored or un-seen, that the culture of a city sometimes exists on such behavior, but Miéville is doing far more than tossing metaphors around. He’s showing us ideas, big ideas having to do with philosophy, perception, motivation, manipulation, behavior control, mind control and much more. And, by the way, it’s a darned good detective tale.

The City and the City is a labyrinthine tale that is the ultimate “You can get lost in it” novel. Yet reading it is anything but a frustrating experience. This is the most mind-expanding (and the best) novel I’ve run across this year. There’s a reason it’s been nominated for a long list of awards: it’s stellar. Read it.