The City & The City is a fantasy novel by China Miéville which tells the story of Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Besźel Extreme Crime Squad. He’s sent to investigate the death of an unknown woman in the city of Besźel and discovers that the city shares an intertwined, overlapping existence with Ul Qoma, a nearby metropolis with a very different culture. Inspector Borlú soon finds himself caught up in a mystery involving powerful political elements threatening the peace between the two cities. He must traverse both places to uncover the truth, while learning how to navigate the fragile yet complex relationship between them.
The citizens of Besźel and Ul Qoma must practice a curious kind of metaphorical “unseeing” in order to coexist without notice While both cities appear to be independent metropolises, intersections between the cities exist throughout both, but the inhabitants must remain blind to the other’s citizens, infrastructure and buildings. This surreal, enforced separation has been in place for centuries and residents must be careful not to breach ‘Breach’, the police-like authority tasked with controlling the interlacing of both.
As the novel progresses, Inspector Tyador Borlú quickly learns that the case goes deeper than a simple murder and that a power struggle between both cities has been going on for a long time. He finds himself in the middle of a clandestine war between the two cities and a powerful international organisation called the Rountree Group. As the investigation delves deeper, he realises that a damaging truth is hidden in the dual city’s depths and must be revealed if the two cities are to escape catastrophic consequences.
In The City & The City, Miéville uses the setting of two different cities intertwined to bring out the motif of duality. Duality features prominently in terms of the two cities, but is also further explored in cultural, personal, and political contexts. The use of duality here gives the novel a complexity and nuance that extends beyond the physical landscapes of either city and allows the reader to explore different aspects of identity, the lengths one will go for one’s beliefs, and the often unsavoury machinations of power in a larger macroscopic setting. It is a narrative that delicately examines the human experience, fear and grief, whilst examining the duality of each narrative.
The novel is a blend of magic and technology, constancy and change, past and present, all of which blend together to create a vivid and captivating narrative. The City & The City is filled with complex ideas, cultural references and political themes, but it also has a unique style of writing that evokes strong imagery, creating a mood of dread, confusion and oppression. Miéville’s ability to bring two cities to life with his prose alone is truly remarkable and the result is a vivid, dynamic and compelling story of duality, identity, and a world where one must learn to “unsee.”