The City & The City

I start a lot of books and for many of them, the books slowly draw me in, the first third is OK, the back story is building. The second third starts to get good and the final third is amazing. This was the case with The City & The City by China Miéville, I couldn’t put it down for the final chapters.

There is so much in there, so many things, so much that spoke to me about what is happening in the world today. Two cities, located in the same geographic location, but separated by the citizens not seeing each other or the other city. And when a murder means crossing over to investigate in the other city, Borlú the investigator from Beszel goes and it’s fascinating.

And the characters along with the entire worlds of Beszel and Ul Qoma are fascinating to me. How would this actually work? But then I started to think about contested cities in the world, could this solution ever come about? But I also got caught up in the story of the murder victim, her fascination with those two cities, and how it all came about. Read it, it’s good.

We are all philosophers here where I am, and we debate among many other things the question of where it is that we live. On that issue I am a liberal. I live in the interstice yes, but I live in both the city and the city. (loc 5027)