The City & The City

China Mieville

This was a strange book. I feel like I have been saying that a lot lately about the books I am reading (see here), but mostly this has been good. It took the first third to really understand what was going on, and it turns out that Meiville has taken a current political issue and pushed it to the extreme. So extreme, that it is ridiculous, and yet allows you to pull back and look at current reality with a new lens. The landscape of this novel is two cities (Beszel and Ul Qoma) that are split a la Berlin pre-1989 or Jerusalem now. The difference is that the cities are not split by a single wall or line, but geographically overlap. So there are sections that are total Beszel, sections that are total Ul Qoma, and sections that are "crosshatched", or geographically coincident. Think gerrymandering on steroids. The citizens of each city are not allowed to cross the borders, which means careful attention everywhere. And when in these "crosshatched" areas, you may be standing next to someone from the other city, but not allowed to talk to them as that would constitute a border crossing. A mysterious police force called Breach monitors and enforces border violations with a zero tolerance policy. With this landscape developed, throw in a murder mystery that does cross borders, detectives on both sides that are serious about solving crime and you have an entralling tale. I love how Meiville has developed the "unseeing" as a natural way of life in the crosshatched areas and challenges our detective protagonist to see and unsee differently when he travels to the other city. One could definitely ponder for quite some time what kinds of things in our own lives we choose to unsee, or have happened into unseeing based on repetition or denial.

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postscript - It has been just about a year since my librarian has been feeding me books and now 50 books later, I have yet to be disappointed. If you want to read more or start reading, get to know your librarian. In my case, if you tell her the kinds of things you like... she will hook you up.