The SF Site Featured Review: The City & The City

The City & The City

China Miéville

Del Rey, 320 pages

China Miéville
China Miéville was born in London in 1972. When he was eighteen, he lived and taught English in Egypt, where he developed an interest in Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics. Miéville has a B.A. in social anthropology from Cambridge and a master's with distinction from the London School of Economics. His first novel, King Rat, was nominated for both an International Horror Guild Award and the Bram Stoker Prize. Perdido Street Station won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award. He lives in London, England.

ISFDB Bibliography
SF Site Review: The City & The City
SF Site Review: Un Lun Dun
SF Site Review: Un Lun Dun
SF Site Review: Iron Council
SF Site Review: The Scar
SF Site Review: The Tain
SF Site Review: The Scar
SF Site Review: Perdido Street Station
SF Site Review: Perdido Street Station

A review by Rich Horton

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The City and the City is as I write on the final ballot for the Best Novel Hugo -- as you read this the winner may be known. It has already won the Arthur C. Clarke and BSFA awards for Best Novel. It is without question worthy of these honors (which is not to say that there are not other books of similar quality similarly worthy). But, of course, China Miéville has been much honored for his previous novels. Even so, in a curious way I think this is the book that once and for all tells us "China Miéville is a major writer". By this I mean not only that this is my favorite Miéville so far -- though it is. More directly, I mean that this shows off Miéville's range, and his ability to pitch his narrative voice to match the needs of his story. Also, The City and the City is a book that, to a much greater extent than his previous work, relies on ideas as opposed to color for its effect. Perhaps this is unfairly prejudicing ideas over color; and very likely this is prejudicing an author with range over some very fine writers who could really do only one thing, though they could do that thing very well. So be it.

The central conceit of the novel has been well publicized. Beszel and Ul Qoma are two cities that occupy the same geographical space. They are intricately interwoven, such that some areas are "total" -- all one city or the other -- but some are "crosshatched," so that one building might be in Beszel and its neighbor in Ul Qoma. The residents have been trained to "see" and "unsee" their surroundings: clothing, language, architecture, etc. of the two cities are sufficiently different that it is relatively easy for a native to "unsee" citizens of the other city, and indeed it seems to be second nature for adults. This separation is jealously guarded by most residents, though each city has both "nationalists," who believe the entire geographical area should be one city at the expense of the other, and "unificationists," who believe that the two cities should merge, keeping the characteristics of each. (Of course, one might ask oneself, is not a truly fundamental characteristic of each city the way it "unsees" its neighbor?) And this separation is enforced by the mysterious and mutually "unseen" agents of "Breach," which punishes, in unexplained ways, those who violate the strictures separating the two cities.

That idea is philosophically fascinating -- worthy of Borges. But it does not by itself support a plot. The plot driving The City and the City is explicitly a noirish mystery. The central character is Tyador Borlú, an Inspector for Beszel's Extreme Crime Squad. His new case is the murder of a young woman who turns out to be an American graduate student in archaeology, who had been part of a team excavating a "Precursor" site -- a site from prior to the "cleavage" of the two cities. Borlú learns that the murdered woman was in fact resident in Ul Qoma, and it soon becomes clear that her murder might represent a case of "breach," which would be a comfort of sorts to Borlú, as the responsibility for finding the killer would be pushed off to those mysterious forces. But things become more complicated, as "breach" is denied, and as it becomes clear that one of the victim's particular interests was the theory, generally regarded as crackpot, that there is a third, invisible, city occupying the same area as Beszel and Ul Qoma: a "city between the cities" called Orciny. Eventually Tyador is sent to Ul Qoma to assist the police in that city in investigating the murder.

Miéville does not disappoint in unraveling the murder plot, though I must say his solution, while logical enough and with some decent twistiness, does seem routine in the context of the more interesting philosophical questions that to me stand at the center of the novel. But those questions are indeed sufficient, given the underpinning of a solid murder mystery plot, to carry the novel. Borlú's visit to Ul Qoma, combined with the opening scenes set in Beszel, means that the reader gets to see both cities. We also see the perspective of foreigners: the various archaeologists, for example, and the parents of the murder victim. And we also get a glimpse of the agents of Breach. The whole conceit of the separated cities is carried off beautifully, and it is more than just a conceit, it has real thematic weight. It evokes, but does not "allegorize," such "separations" as the two sides in the Cold War (i.e. East and West Berlin); and also countries divided by religion, such as, say, Northern Ireland. But the idea has its own individuality, and I found myself, while ultimately sympathizing with the "unificationists," understanding the feelings of the majority of the citizens of both cities, who emotionally want to preserve their uniqueness, their differences. The City and the City is, thus, both a solidly enjoyable read for its mystery plot, and a fascinating book to think about.

Rich Horton is an eclectic reader in and out of the SF and fantasy genres. He's been reading SF since before the Golden Age (that is, since before he was 13). Born in Naperville, IL, he lives and works (as a Software Engineer for the proverbial Major Aerospace Company) in St. Louis area and is a regular contributor to Tangent. Stop by his website at http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton.