You know those books that are always on the cusp of being read? Like a word on the tip of your tongue, you’ve constantly been ‘about to read it’, even if always remains fourth or fifth or fifteenth in the mental queue. Well, I got The City and The City (2009) by China Miéville for my birthday in 2010, and finally I’ve read it – I originally wanted to read it after reading a review by Sakura, who used to blog at Chasing Bawa.
The concept is what fascinated me. The narrator is Inspector Borlu, who lives in Beszel – those words should have an accent on the u and z respectively; please imagine them there. Beszel is a slightly run-down city somewhere in Eastern Europe – it also occupies the same space as the city Ul Qoma.
This isn’t fantasy, though. Rather, it’s a development of the sort of tension between cities that happened with East and West Berlin – taken to a logical extreme. Certain parts of the ‘glossotopia’ are Ul Qoma and certain parts of Beszel, but there is also a substantial ‘cross-hatched’ region, where the cities co-exist. And it is not an amicable coexistence.
Neighbouring houses might be in different cities. Pedestrians on the same street are citizens of different places. And acknowledging the other city in any way is illegal – and will get you taken away by Breach, a sort of secret police. Citizens of each city train themselves to ‘unsee’ the buildings and people of the other city – recognising, in a glimpse, an architecture or a style of dress that marks somebody as unseeable. Here is Borlu at the checkpoint between the cities:
Pedestrians and vehicles came and went. Cars and vans drove into it near us, to wait at the easternmost point, where passports and papers were checked and motorists were given permission – or sometimes refused it – to leave Beszel. A steady current. More metres, through the inter-checkpoint interstice under the hall’s arc, another wait at the buildings’ western gates, for entry into Ul Qoma. A reversed process in the other lanes.
Then the vehicles with their stamped permissions-to-cross emerged at the opposite end from where they entered, and drove into a foreign city. Often they doubled back, on the cross-hatched streets in the Old Town or the Old Town, to the same space they had minutes earlier occupied, though in a new juridic realm.
If someone needed to go to a house physically next door to their own but in the neighbouring city, it was in a different road in an unfriendly power. That is what foreigners rarely understand. A Besz dweller cannot walk a few paces next door into an alter house without breach.
But a book can’t just be its setting, of course. The story is about a horrific murder, of a Besz woman who had been an academic. Her particular area of interest was controversial: a rumoured third city, hidden between the other two and not known by either… Her parents come to the city/cities to try to find their daughter’s murderer, and naturally do not understand the divisions they must respect.
Police procedurals are not usually my cup of tea, and I did have to skim over some of the more graphic passages, but there aren’t many of those. Borlu is a good protagonist for this set up – obeying the rules of the city and its ‘hidden’ counterpart, while mentally thinking them absurd. He is not quite Winston Smith from Nineteen Eighty-Four, and he has no dawning revelation or rebellion against a corrupt and bizarre system. Instead, he has to work within the confines of this curious world, determined to find the killer. The quest for justice gets increasingly dangerous as fraught secrets threaten to become discovered…
The City and the City isn’t a novel I’d look twice at if it were just a modern crime novel, and the plot didn’t overwhelm me. But what kept me captivated was that brilliant concept. Somehow, Miéville kept it original and enthralling. I did wonder if it would be the same idea repeated over and over, burning out after a flare of novelty. but it’s not. Dealing with the nuances of simultaneous cities complicates the plot, but I could honestly have read Miéville’s descriptions of them and their inhabitants as much as he cared to write. A brilliant idea is fully realised.
Part of me wishes this idea was used for something other than a crime novel – but the two are really inseparable in the way the novel develops. Not my usual fare, but recommended for the extraordinary and sustained cleverness of the concept.
Oh how great you read it. I would agree it doesn’t seem like your usual fare, but the conceit makes it so compelling. It was adapted for the stage by one of my theater companies and wasvery good. Miéville even came and saw it and professed to like it though that must always be odd for an author. It made for great stage movement of actors moving past each other “unseeing” each other and the costume design of the two parallel cities, creating the ambiance of them was really lovely.
Oh this must have been fun and difficult to stage!
You’ve reminded me that I need to read this too – having had a copy on my shelves for probably around the same amount of time that you have. I wouldn’t have thought this was your kind of book either, and it’s lovely to be proved wrong.
Nice to try something different! I suppose I’m a sucker for a high-concept novel that doesn’t lose connection with the real world. If this had been a fantasy land, I wouldn’t have engaged with it – but I love this idea because it’s surreal but could technically happen.
There are so many books by this author I want to read, and yet I haven’t started. Sound slike I should jump into this one. Great review, thanks
I’ve realised I don’t know anything about any of his other books, so will have to explore.
I was very surprise when you mentioned it in your podcast, it does seem out of your comfort zone! I’m glad you enjoyed it though. I read it with a book group several years ago. It made for an interesting discussion but I’m not quite sure I liked it. I had a really hard time grasping the concept of the two co-existing cities. Of course it could be a metaphor which is not always my strong suit.
My book group is now doing it later in the year, so I look forward to discussing.
I was surprised to see this book on your blog but your reaction to it makes total sense. Matthew has read a few of his books and liked them but I think they’re a bit Much for me.
I like to keep things interesting, Liz :D
Certainly not a book I would have expected you to read Simon! I have it on my shelves, because I loved his writing in October (albeit a non-fiction work) and my Eldest Child rates him highly. I’m glad there isn’t too much grossness to get past, and it does sound right up my street!
Yes, you’ll need to skim a bit early on, but otherwise all good!
Do you know, when I read this I was about halfway through before I realised that the two cities DID in fact, as you clearly explain, share the same time and space. I thought they were overlapping worlds. Heh.
I agree with you about the plot. I think he’s a writer who’s more about the concept and is both wildly original – parallel cities! – and then quite mundane – fairly bog standard plot. I’ve read a few of his books now but my favourite and one I think you might like too is This Census-Taker.
This was televised a year or two ago and actually the televisation was very good and worth looking out for.
I only discovered it was televised when searching for the image to add! I think I might find it too violent to watch..
And yes, so well put – wildly original and quite mundane.
Hi, Simon,
If you are using a Windows computer and you look on your main menu, the one at the left bottom that’s just indicated by a Windows icon, under Windows Accessories, there’s a Character Map that allows you to do accents and foreign characters. That way you don’t have to ask your readers to imagine the marks on Bésźel. Most foreign characters and diacritical marks are there. Apologies if you already know this!
Thanks Kay!
It’s good that you’re keeping so many of us on our toes, choosing something challenging now and again. Like you, I thought this exceptionally clever and engaging. It seemed like a book that I would be reading in set sessions, but I read it very quickly and easily and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s wonderful to think of the stage version and the TV version that others, above, have recommended also: thank you! He’s someone whose way of thinking intrigues me generally, and even though this wasn’t the first of his books that I’ve read, it also won’t be the last.