The City & the City

by China Miéville

Paperback, 500 pages

English language

Published May 1, 2011 by imusti, Pan Publishing.

ISBN:: 978-0-330-53419-2
OCLC Number:: 728078448
Goodreads:: 9791714

(28 reviews)

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.

Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into …

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

3 editions

The Weaver Reads reviewed The City & the City by China Miéville

Goodreads Review of The City & the City

5 stars

Content warning Spoilers ahead!

This is really an incredible mystery/thriller that isn't directly about the surface-topic. Miéville does an outstanding job dealing with liminality, and his world-building is top-notch. If I could ever write something as well-crafted as this novel, I would be satisfied in life. That said, the end of the "mystery" left a lot to be desired. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it was ham-fisted in the way that Miéville seems to let out his grievances at New Labour and the post-Cold War order, but that may just be my own subjective interpretation. But, the end of the mystery isn't the point, and Miéville's writing is utterly beautiful.

Scrumbles P. Abernathy reviewed The City & the City by China Miéville

review of The City & The City

3 stars

The premise is spectacular. Mieville did an amazing job world building two cities in the same geographic footprint that have separate languages, customs, mannerisms and aesthetics. They remain separate because the citizens don't acknowledge each other under the threat of customs and the law.

It's a noir detective story through and through. The prose is overwrought and full of garden path sentences. It reinforces the cramped warren-like feel of Beszel but I don't think it was intentional. I kept having to reread sentences because their baroque construction. It really took me out of the story. It's still worth a read.

mindbat reviewed The City & The City by China Miéville

A paranoid thriller with real bite

4 stars

Amazingly well-realized murder mystery in an imagined "pair" of cities. Great noir atmosphere. Evokes living behind the Iron Curtain, the many-layered history of Eastern Europe's cities (many spent several hundred years as Ottoman towns before being recaptured and remade into Austrian/Hungarian/Serbian/etc ones), and the social strains from gentrification, all in one.

The only ding I have is that it's told in the first person, but the narrator is sort of transparent. That is, they didn't seem to have a strong POV to me, so it reads more like third-person than anything else.

Still, it's well done, with a solution (and an ending) that I did not see coming, but felt natural and, really, perfectly encapsulates the themes of the book.

BOOitsnathalie reviewed The City & the City by China Miéville

Review of 'The City & the City' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

Just wrapped it up. It's a very good detective novel though I think it's political allegory sort of falls apart by the end (or at least to the wayside). Lands in a disappointing ambiguity about the role of police and borders, seeing them as both fully artificial and hostile but also necessary because the alternative is total anarchy. I maybe expected something a bit more given Mielville's clear interest in leftist politics, but it was really closer to a Dan Brown novel but <spoiler>where the conspiracy is actually just a sad man with something to prove.</spoiler>

Clément Martin reviewed The City & the City by China Miéville

Review of 'City & the City' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I suppose it wasn't enough for China Miéville to write a gripping thriller with likeable characters that are recognizably tropey without becoming cliché.

It wasn't enough either to write the said thriller in a very rich and flowing style, with a mastery of structure and rhythm that makes of this book a page-turner in which you nevertheless want to stop to taste what you've just read, to think about it--perpetually torn, in a good way, between plot, style and ideas.

On top of that, I guess he HAD to set this brilliant thriller in a world like no other, an uncanny urban environment that challenges your understanding at every corner without being too confusing.

A great, great read; the first book I've read by that author, and certainly not the last.

Armamix reviewed The City & the City by China Miéville

Review of 'City & the City' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

It's a mystery, so I was biased against it from the start, but it had enough quirks and weirdness to keep me interested all the way through. Even so it's my least favorite Miéville so far. The present-day eastern european setting brings something different to the genre and it works well for me. (Btw, is it scifi or fantasy, I'm not quite sure?)