The City And The City

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Here are my first impressions of the book, written earlier this year (I've revised my rating of this one upwards since then, it has a way of staying in your mind and making you think beyond the first reading which is one of the marks of a good book):

I really like China Mieville's New Crobuzon novels, but I'm well pleased with diverse bibliography he's building up - three secondary-world fantasies, a work of urban fantasy, a fantasy novel for teenagers, a collection of mostly horrific short stories, and now this.

THE CITY AND THE CITY (what a great name for a novel - I'd love to commission a whole gaggle of authors to write books with that name) is a detective novel, set in a city where reality is oddly skewed. It follows Detective Inspector Tyador Borlu's investigation into the death of an unknown female murder victim. Borlu lives in an East European city called Besz; a city that co-exists in mutual avoidance with another East European city, called Ul Qoma.

Parts of the cities are total - either completely Besz or Ul Qoma. Others are crosshatched. Still others are disputed. The inhabitants of the cities go to great lengths to unsee each other and each other's cities - if they cross over by any means other than the single official channel available, they are in breach, and will be dealt summary justice by a mysterious third-party organisation known simply as Breach.

At some point in the past the two cities either diverged or converged; no one is really sure, least of all the North American archaeologists who work the digs in Ul Qoma, fertile with odd, anachronistic artifacts, barren of explanations. The dead woman turns out to have been one of these, a brilliant but maverick scholar who at one point gave credence to a madcap theory that a third city, Orciny, somehow exists in the interstices of the two cities. The theory is discredited, even by the man who first came up with it, but soon he, and another young researcher who has been showing interest in Orciny, come under threat.

Along the way, we're treated to a fascinating exploration of the political and personal dynamics of living in this sundered city - a journey that in many ways is reminiscent of living in any city in a world riven with conflicts and self-imposed divides, but taken to the next degree.

Borlu's investigation lead him into murky areas, and the several layers of deception are stripped away to arrive at the solution. The resolution is much less fantastic than I'd hoped - quite sordid in fact, which says something about the fact that Mieville doesn't expect commerce, politics and morality to interact in any more salubrious a way than in our world, no matter what reality conditions prevail.

I personally expected a bit more than this self-contained, and as a mystery novel, complete narrative. We never really get to know more about why the city and the city co-exist in this strange way, whether the sundering is somehow real or only an elaborate cultural norm, an extreme stratification of the way in which people of different cultures or classes ignore each other in the streets of any city you'd care to sample. Certainly, outsiders, animals and young children seem to have considerable trouble keeping the two cities separate. I'm inclined to think that the whole thing is symbolic, it's in the mind, but why? Besz sounds vaguely Slavic; Ul Qoma has Turkish overtones - is this a multicultural city that has taken segregation to a metaphysical extreme? Or have two physical cities somehow, fantastically, come to overlap in the same time and place?

Perhaps it's better that Mieville didn't resolve these questions - a complete reveal can often be no more than a cheap pay-off when the author was more interested in raising questions and sparking unease than in answering questions and placating readers with a made-up resolution. That would certainly be consistent with Mieville's past mode of operation. It may well be that this novel will rise in my estimation with further consideration. As it stands, I would have to say that it is indeed very good, but somehow didn't quite satisfy me.

[GOLLUM]

You've whetted my appetite even further now.

Interesting comments. I'll see if I agree when I tackle this and Mr. Finch end of month.

[Stephen Palmer]

Fantastic novel. This guy can do almost no wrong! I loved the spy/cold war feel of the book, and the whole set-up is brilliant.

[GOLLUM]

Agreed on China, whom I had the pleasure to meet and chat with earlier this year.

I'm currently reading Vandermeer's noir thriller Finch. He's another who doesn't get a lot wrong.

Sounds like we have similar tastes Mr. Palmer... You have obliviously read arguably his greatest masterpiece Perdido Street station then....

[Stephen Palmer]

Ah, yes! I can still remember the sheer joy of reading something so fab. But I think The Scar is his finest so far. If a book could kick you in the mouth - in a good way - this one could. And would.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by Stephen Palmer

Ah, yes! I can still remember the sheer joy of reading something so fab. But I think The Scar is his finest so far. If a book could kick you in the mouth - in a good way - this one could. And would.

Yes, the Scar is also one of his greatest novels but because I read Perdido first and it was my introduction to China, it tended to have the greater impact upon me.

[gully_foyle]

I just picked this one up. I had to have a breather after Perdido Street Station, but now I'm up for another of me old China's.

[ravenus]

The City & The City by China Mieville was an absolutely gripping read till the very end.
Kind of like Michael Crichton meets Franz Kafka but a lot better than that combination would suggest

[Stephen Palmer]

John LeCarre meets M. John Harrison...?

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

How about Simenon meets Borges?

[Ursa major]

Originally Posted by knivesout

I'm inclined to think that the whole thing is symbolic, it's in the mind...

That's my current view (although as I've only just finished reading the novel, this view may change). Both city states border the rest of the world (i.e. there are not two worlds meeting/touching at Besźel/Ul Qoma) and at no time (no time that I noticed, that is) is any special mechanism shown for leaving a cross-hatched area to one or other city.

There seem to be four types of place, based on a Besźel flag (B) and an Ul Qoma flag (U): Ul Qoma only (B=0, U=1); Besźel only (B=1, U=0); cross-hatched (B=1, U=1); dissensi (B=0, U=0). (Breach territory sounds like B=0, U=0). It is, in its strange (nightmarish) way, very logical. And all folk need to know to get around is know what places are theirs: (Besźel folk what is designated as B=1 and Ul Qoma folk what is U=1) and note the dress code (and mannerisms).

Where I think the artifice thins to breaking point is the idea of wars between the two states and with Breach.

Originally Posted by knivesout

...but why?

It's at time like these that I have to remember that Miéville writes fantasy, not SF, even though the only fantasy element in this novel is the superimposition of the two city states. (Okay, I'm still open to theories about this, but given that Miéville doesn't say, even though the POV character spends a lot of time considering the relationship between the two states, I don't think there is a definite answer.)

I don't read GRRM's ASoIaF wondering why its population is humanoid (albeit with strange genetics) or the Bas-Lag books wondering how it is that humans seem to live there or why the female Khepri are the way they are. They are setting and the novels play out against that setting. The same is true of The City & The City.




PS. Nice cat.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Well.

For one thing, I'm not convinced that there are catch-all standards of believability for entire genres - a lot of the conceits in SF are just fantasies with a bit of of quantum foam on top and wrapped up in superstrings. It's true that there are things in Mieville novels that demand a certain willing suspension of disbelief, but this is something that is so central to the novel at hand that it feels like a weakness in its construction in retrospect.

Yes, she is a very nice cat - her name's Chrysoberyl.

[Stephen Palmer]

Mieville purposely mixes genres, and thus wrong-foots us... it's one of the reasons he's so good!

[Ursa major]

Originally Posted by knivesout

Well.

For one thing, I'm not convinced that there are catch-all standards of believability for entire genres - a lot of the conceits in SF are just fantasies with a bit of of quantum foam on top and wrapped up in superstrings. It's true that there are things in Mieville novels that demand a certain willing suspension of disbelief, but this is something that is so central to the novel at hand that it feels like a weakness in its construction in retrospect.

Agreed, but I think the overalll idea was intriguing enough to carry this reader past that weakness.

Originally Posted by Stephen Palmer

Mieville purposely mixes genres, and thus wrong-foots us... it's one of the reasons he's so good!

Also agreed. (By the way, my favoutite Miéville book is still Perdido Street Station, another cross-genre novel.)


And to state the obvious, he's also more than a little political, so The City & The City can easily be seen as a comment on (a criticism of) the way people don't "see" (or unsee) things they don't want to see (such as the consequences of their own actions).

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Absolutely; and as such a comment it is remarkably accurate in showing how cities function, or at least cities in my country with their diverse, mutually exclusive cultures and vast disparities in economic status and living conditions. Well-heeled corporate chieftains on their way to the international airport in Bangalore have long ago learned to Unsee the slums along the path, to say nothing of the ravaged countryside on the final stretch to that airport.